Painting an Irish landscape
The Crossing
Still in the Slieve Bloom Mountains.
This painting uses only 3 colours (Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Prussian Blue) plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits.
Here is a video of the painting process. To view in realtime change setting to .25. Quality can also be set up to 1080HD.
Glenbarrow
Glenbarrow in the Slieve Bloom Mountains is the source of the River Barrow. Along with the Massif Central in France, these mountains are the oldest in Europe. They were once also the highest at 3,700m. Weathering has reduced them to 527m. On a clear day, one can see the high points of the four ancient provinces of Ireland.
This painting uses only 3 colours (Indian yellow, Permanent Rose, Prussian Blue) plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits. The size is 16.5″ x 12″.
Here is the video of the painting process. To view this video in realtime change speed setting to .25. Quality can also be increased to 1080HD.
Boundary Fence
The colours of spring, a promise of summer.
This painting uses only 3 colours (Indian Yellow, Rose Madder Genuine, Ultramarine Blue) plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits. The size is 16.5″ x 12″. It was painted in a single session ‘wet on wet’.
Notice I’m using a different red in this painting, Rose Madder Genuine. Its a Series 5 (W&N) paint so its very expensive. Its transparent, rich, similar to Alizarin but darkens quickly in mixes. I haven’t used it in many years and then in a completely different method, flower painting in still life.
Here is the video of the painting process. To view in realtime change setting to .25. Quality can also be set up to 1080HD.
February Marsh
Highlight colour usually contains white. The more white the lighter the tone, the weaker the colour. I used very little white in these foreground colours in order to get rich colour. The dark colourless shapes of the trees on the right emphasises this colour. Notice the transparent under colour layer of blue also in here using colour contrast to help emphasise the richness of the colour. To see these details click on the picture above to see an enlarged version.
The size is 16.5″ x 12″ and was painted in a single ‘wet on wet’ session in about 2 hours. This painting uses only 3 colours (Cadmium Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue) plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits.
Here is the video of the painting process. To view in realtime change speed setting to .25. Quality can also be set up to 1080HD. See you soon.
Scarlet Flood
The new year starts with great skies, here’s one.
There are only 3 colours used in this painting. They are the primaries, yellow, red and blue. Up until recently I used colours which were weak versions of the 3 primaries. For example, Burnt Sienna for red or Yellow Ochre for yellow. The secondary mixes were subtle soft colours and I would introduce the raw colour, here and there, to perk up these colours. Where the secondary mix was particularly weak, like the green produced by Yellow Ochre and Cerulean Blue, a ‘tube’ green like Viridian was used.
This painting is produced by very strong primary colours, Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson & Ultramarine Blue. To produce a natural landscape with these vivid colours requires using all 3 colours, even in tiny amounts, in each mix. The initial under colours are the lowest quantity in the mixes. For example, the red in the sky is under painted with blue and the blue of the sky is under painted with red. Because its ‘wet on wet’ there is a little bit of this under colour picked up in the final layers. The more you brush the more is picked up. To perk up these layers some of the under colour is left uncovered.
All is revealed in the following video. And remember, to view in realtime change speed setting to .25. Quality can also be set to 1080HD.
Colours used Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue plus black and white. All Alkyd Oil Paints. There is no medium used, only White Spirits solvent. The size is 16.5″ x 10″ and was painted in a single session in under 2 hours.
Year’s End
A little bit of frost remains on the grass as a warm front moves in.
One of the most frequent requests I get is to upload a ‘realtime’ video of the painting process. This was technically impossible for me because of the file sizes involved and my broadband was not good.
Recently my broadband capacity got a boost and I can now upload much bigger files. The video I uploaded in this post can be slowed down to the ‘realtime’ speed using the YouTube settings. By doing it like this the file size is still 25% of an actual realtime file but the movement is a bit blurred. Needless to say, the speed can also be increased to my previous setting.
Also remember the viewing quality can be maxed up to 1080HD in the same settings (All this depends on your broadband speeds).
Please excuse the missing start of the painting. In my experimenting, I ‘lost’ the first part of the painting video.
This painting uses only 3 colours (Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Prussian Blue) plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits. The size is 16.5″ x 12″.
Here’s the video. See you soon.
November Fog
The greyness of fog will soon melt away in the morning sun.
I like to have fine line details in my paintings, such as in the trees or foreground grasses. I also like these details to have a natural look. This is a difficult task. Some very small details can be suggested as in the distant trees or the very small branches in the 2 trees on the left in this painting.
I use a very fine nylon brush for the details which have to be seen, the tree trunks and fence posts for example. Carrying a solvent rich quantity of paint on the brush can produce these lines on the wet under colour. The smaller details can be dragged out of these ‘reservoirs’ of liquid paint with the tip of the fine brush. As with the trees here, they were populated quickly with lots of smaller branches using this technique.
For foreground grasses the same applies – blobs of liquid paint are put in place, sometimes outside the edge of the painting and flicked upwards with the fine brush.
This painting uses 4 colours (Yellow Ochre, Alizarin Crimson, Raw Umber, Cobalt Blue) plus black and white. All colours are Alkyd Fast Drying Oils, except Cobalt Blue. The medium used is Liquin and White Spirits. The size is 16.5″ x 12″ and was painted in a single session in under an hour and a half.
Here’s the painting process, see you soon.
Ivy Island
The heavens are in turmoil and the trees, ghosts of last summer, look on. Hallowe’en.
This painting is mostly about the sky. I tried to vary the proportions of each colour in the mixtures to give slightly different colours in each formation of clouds. I am using 4 colours and they are all present in these paint mixes.
When painting ‘wet on wet’, pickup on the brush is always an issue. In this painting I am using a ‘modifier’ brush to manipulate the paint after it has been applied. For example, in the sky I used a single brush (No 12 filbert, blue handle in video below) to apply the colour. As the colour mixes are evolving one into the next, I don’t need to clean this brush. A small amount of Liquin medium was used, as solvent on its own was evaporating too fast and the layers were not blending smoothly. This bending, or ‘modifying’, was done with a wide short bristled filbert (cream coloured handle).
Also, painting the few sparse remaining leaves on the trees was done with the tip of the large No 12 filbert. This applied the paint in heavy liquid blobs on the wet under colour of the sky but leaving a distinctive brush pattern. The ‘modifier’ in this case was a round bristle which disguised the pattern and blended the paint into the background sky colour.
Here’s the video of the process. See you soon.
October Colours
The colours of October are found in the woods. Already the leaves are thinning and the light is penetrating into the shadows.
The size is 11″ x 11″. The colours used are Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Cerulean Blue plus black and white. The medium used is Liquin and White Spirits.
Here’s the video of the painting process.
Wexford Coast
Ireland’s East coast, particularly Wexford, does not have the spectacular mountains or cliffs you find in the West. More of a sunny, sandy, almost Continental flavour and only 40 miles from where I live.
The soft texture in the sky was produced by blending the paint with the wide filbert brush. The brush is drawn lightly in opposite directions, like cross hatching, to produce a ‘misty’ cloud effect. This paint has a ‘dry’ consistency, i.e. very little medium or solvent.
There is another ‘misty’ effect in this painting, the distant coastline. Painted with a liquid paint, mostly solvent with a little Liquin added. It was the paint left on the brush from the painting of the sky, diluted with the medium solution and placed with very little brushing on the horizon. This liquid paint was transparent and allowed the red under-colour to shine through.
This painting uses only 3 colours (Indian Yellow, Cadmium Red, Prussian Blue) plus black and white. The Medium – Liquin and White Spirits. I used a single large filbert bristle and a ‘liner’ for details. The size is 16.5″ x 12″ un-stretched canvas and was painted in a single session of about 90 minutes.
Here’s the painting process. See you soon.
PictureS 