Exercise 9 Working from a photograph

Version 1 - not for assessment.
For an increasingly irritating amount of time I was looking for a photo to use. Nothing I saw seemed ‘quite right’ – trees in the mid ground or hills/mountains in the background. Ironically after all the searching round I settled on a view of a field just next to my house. It appeared to contain all the right elements. The photo is a few years old from a time when there were fence posts receding to the mid ground. These have now disappeared and the track is now more well used and worn. The field is all crop stubble, whereas it was pastureland before. Now I have plenty photos of both of views, taken from various angles.
 Not long after, I found another photo I wanted to try, from a newspaper.  Its allure was the dark silhouetted trees and buildings, but most of all the mist.





This looks like a field containing a crop of some kind, so I mixed dried crushed leaves with pva and applied these to the foreground area for texture and thinner mixture in middleground field and the line of trees. If there are any leaves on the trees, the leaves echo probably these. I took a little used stay wet palette paper with dried on paint and stuck these down for some texture in the trees.
I tried to break away from the original photo by cropping it with a viewfinder and masking off the area I decided to use.

version 1

Just by using sketches, I couldn’t seem to obtain satisfactory results with from the misty look. I suggested faint directional tracks like those on the first sketch, these weren’t in the photo but they looked out of place. So, I felt compelled to keep referring back to the photo to try and work out where I was going wrong, adding glaze after glaze, over the opaque paint base, scumble after scumble, rubbing some back with a rag just before dry, but none appeared to solve things. Funnily enough, after the point I think may be beyond repair I discovered Tonalism, but all the examples I found were done using oil paints. I may make a further attempt at improving it after some thinking time has passed.

I regretted slightly that I didn't choose an oil painting medium as a base and oil paints over the top, as I think the medium with the oil paint would be more conducive to creating a misty atmospheric effect. This is something I will have to try out on another occasion.


Version 2 -assessment

Two colour sketches

The reference photo for this as taken at a warmer time of year on a sunny day. It is a view of silage bales in a nearby field. This was the first painting I did totally using knives. I kept to a strictly limited palette and quite small surface dimensions because of the large amount of paint needed for each colour. This can also create with adequate room for mixing on the palette itself. I usually find I need at least two large tear of palettes. I also wanted to focus on practicing knife techniques here rather than worry too much about the colour palette. I found this to be one of the more enjoyable paintings. One major fault is the aerial perspective I think is lost a little due to the darkness of the distant mountains against the deep yellow next to it across the middle distance. However, I think the linear marks of the field patterns help to balance this out to some degree, lending perspective and give a look of recession into the far distance.
Changes:
As the sky was very blue all the way to the horizon, I took the advice of my tutor again and practised with some quick studies of skies as loosely as I could allow myself. Colours used cobalt blue, then prussian blue, both mixed with  a little burnt umber, gradually adding more whit approaching the horizon and a little yellow ochre - this was added to reflect the ochres of the earth tone in the field stubble. The mountains were very dark so I lightened them a little with some sky tones and to give them light reflection from the sky. This, and the gradation in the sky gave the background further depth and recession. The touch of yellow ochre has a warming effect without advancing unduly. The white, yellow ochre and prussian blue produced  attractive muted hues, compared to ultramarine used alone for instance, which is very intense.

finished version before alterations to the sky

After alterations to sky - there 
is quite a lot of light reflection off this photograph;
I don't think the sky is so bright in actuality.

The photo was dulled
down slightly