Exercise 6 Painting a landscape outside

Painting a landscape outside

On thinking about where to go and what kind of view to use for this painting:
I wanted a location which would be sheltered. As it would most likely be during November when I did the outdoor painting, I took into consideration whether it would sheltered from wind and rain and if isolated and quiet, or busy and noisy. As it happened, I was fortunate enough to spot a location while out walking one day September/October. There were good open views on the side of a haill . it was elevated above a valley, yet sheltered, as surrounded by trees on three sides. It was a quitet spot and there were two long benches end to end. I wasn’t likely to be disturbed by passers-by, especially if I chose a week day.

sketch 1

As far as equipment went I didn’t possess any kind of easel for outdoor painting, so I did a little research on them in books and online. Initially I considered a sketching easel but I found the relatively high price and weight rather off putting. I was more concerned about having something much more maneuverable as well as having a box for storing materials. Fortunately I found the item to meet my preferred criteria when I spotted pochade boxes in a book ‘Oils Workshop’ by Richard Pikesley. In many respects these are designed to be balanced on the knees as they are not self supporting.  However, when doing a comparison between the two it was an easy decision to opt for the latter. Since I would need to walk up quite a steep incline for about 15 to 20 minutes there was no competition really.  Pochade boxes also have the advantage of containing slots in the lid where several painting boards can be stored behind one another with a gap between them.
During my outing to do the painting I found it was fairly easy to transport all the equipment I needed with the assistance of a small rucksack. Just before setting off I discovered that a container of turps had leaked all over the bottom of the bag so it was transferred to another container in kitchen paper and a thick plastic bag.
Firstly I took a few photographs to help me frame the views in one way, then used my viewfinder to help me find views from which I made three sketches from varying angles.
I also used them to zoom the views in and out a little. It was a fresh windy day, but fairly overcast and the sun was shining intermittently from my left. Initially I tried a low horizon line, but raised it after realizing that the sky on that day was relatively uninteresting compared to the ground: hills down to the valley and upwards again to the stone and earth banking just a couple of metres in front to me. So, after the third sketch I decided to raise the horizon line.

sketch 3

outdoor painting

The view that I chose to do was similar to the third sketch, as it seemed to have a good range of interesting features, while not too fussy. After outlining roughly the largest shapes in thin paint I used undiluted paint to lay in the large masses.  There wasn't much contrast of light and shade due to the weather being quite overcast. It wasn't too difficult to make some out on the foreground wooden posts, banking and trees, but I had to half close my eyes, looking hard to pick out the value changes in other areas. I rearranged and altered some of the existing elements to suit my desired composition. I didn’t want to take more than an hour painting, partly because there was the danger of it looking too laboured if I continued beyond a certain stage. It wasn’t such a difficult decision to make as I started to feel the cold and knew before long my hands would be numb, even though I was wearing thin woolly gloves. In total I was there for 1.5 hours, including making the three sketches and a painting. When I got home and looked over the photos I had taken while there, I was surprised to see how much the light had changed during the time as I didn’t notice much then. I felt that the painting looked unfinished, like a quick study. In fact that’s what it was, but it had taken slightly longer – about 30 to 40 minutes.

second version painted indoors

I went ahead with a second version as I had a hankering to try to see how much progress I could make with a longer version based on the first. The second version took a bit longer to do – about two hours. Even then I had omitted a lot of detail and moved some elements around and left out the wooden posts in the foreground. It turned out that I went back to it a couple of days later to finish the detail in the stones because I had been getting the wet on wet paint turning into a muddy mess. I also added further shadows to the lower clouds, and later realized they became too heavy looking.  I should have left them as they were beforehand..