Bleak February

Its cold and bleak with a North wind threatening snow and sleet. Now and then the sun breaks through and illuminates the desiccated vegetation.

Raw Umber and Cerulean Blue are the colours I associate with this time of year. Mixed, they produce a range of colours from the grey of clouds to the deep dark shadows of winter woodland, all from the same 2 colours adding white for clouds and black for the deep shadows. What a harmony this creates.

Raw Sienna was the third colour. To emphasise and contrast the sunlit area, Raw Sienna was used very sparingly in the other parts of the painting. A little was used in the sunlit clouds and again in the dirt track with patches here and there in the foreground grasses. These patches are isolated and kept separate from the main body of cool green grass. This helps to integrate this area of warm golden sunlight in the overall cold scene. Too much contrast of colour would look a little odd.

I used a single filbert bristle and allowed the colour evolve one into the next by not cleaning the brush. This is one of the advantages of a limited palette with the entire painting a range of variations of the same basic colour. The fine lines were painted with an inexpensive nylon ‘rigger’.

Here’s the video of the process, see you soon.