practice

Tree Trunk Sketch, 7 x 5 inch

In my quest to become a better landscape painter I've started a new virtual workshop, Drawing & Painting Trees, with landscape painter Deborah Paris. She's a wonderful teacher and firmly believes that in order to paint the landscape one needs to understand the characteristics of the natural world around you, and the best way to do that is to get out your sketch book and get to work. Apparently, this practice was quite common for some landscape painters in the early years to create loads of sketches during the summer months, thus providing source material for painting during the winter months.

Similar Underpainting

8"x24"

Here's another underpainting for my current workshop. I'm trying to keep the values on the light side since it should darken up as the layers of glazing are applied. I need to crank out many more so I can try using an array of different transparent colors and see what sort of effects happen.

Underpainting

6"x12"









Here's an underpainting I'm working on for my Deborah Paris Tonalism workshop. I'll need to let this dry before applying multiple translucent layers. This slow methodical approach is killing me....no pain, no gain, right?

Tonalism

I've been busy reading and sketching for a virtual workshop that I'm taking with tonalist painter Deborah Paris. This is an entirely different process than the direct, alla prima method I'm used to. Tonalism involves using lots of glazing, using similar values and if all goes well, arriving with a sublime end result. Deborah's starting advice is to create many thumbnail sketches of your subject in order to arrive with a composition that works, because if it doesn't work small it will never work large, good advice! Time to sharpen up the pencils and crank out some more sketches....