Golden Wood

The woods are turning glorious shades of gold, helped by this spell of dry mild weather. When the sun shines here among the beech trees, the colours are exaggerated beyond belief. Or maybe this is how I perceive them from the shadows.

I knew from the outset that there was going to be a lot of shadows, especial in the upper parts of the tree. As an ‘alla prima’ painting this is always a problem, painting directly onto a wet under layer. If I had left that area blank, without the sky colour, it would have curtailed the placement of later shadows relative to what was happening in the other parts of the painting. So the entire sky was painted in.

I use Alkyd fast drying oil colours especially in situations like this. The sky was Alkyd Titanium White and Alkyd Ultramarine Blue. A small amount of solvent was added to help spread the colour. White is disastrous if it gets mixed with shadow colours. By using Alkyd, when it came to adding the shadows, in the upper left hand side, there was little or no mixing with the sky colour. To get this effect with standard oils would mean waiting a few days for the white/blue to dry. This is OK if you don’t mind waiting. I prefer to finish in a single session and don’t like going back when I’m already thinking about the next painting.

Remember, paint manufacturers are cautious about mixing Alkyd and standard oils. If you paint in the traditional way, that is, in layers, allowing each to dry before the next is placed on top, problems with cracking and flaking can occur if fast drying Alkyd is placed over slow drying standard oils.

I have heard of painters using Alkyd White with standard oils. As white is mainly used in the final layers, mid tones and highlights, this will dry quickly sealing off the under layers and retarding the drying of these layers. A brittle hard layer on top of a flexible semi-dry layer can only mean trouble down the line.

The colours used are: Cadmium Yellow, Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue plus black and white. I used solvent only with no medium. The size is 12″ x 9″.

Here’s the video. See you soon.