After a long run of citrus still life paintings, I decided to pull out some old landscape color studies and do a larger painting. Here’s the first study:
I decided to base the larger painting on the second study which has an autumn palette.
Here’s the block in on a 20″ x 20″ stretched canvas. My goal was for the trees and bushes to pick up and emphasize the diagonals and counter-diagonals of the ridgeline.
The under painting was done with water miscible Duo Aqua Oils by Holbein. I thinned the paint with lots of water in order to just stain the canvas, but found that the paint didn’t stick very well. Fearing adhesion problems in the subsequent layers, I vigorously scrubbed the canvas to remove all surface paint so that the only remaining color was from the stained fibers of the canvas. Since this was just an under painting, I didn’t take great care in mixing the colors. My intention is that the colors will better match the second study. I am hoping to use broken color in the mountains and the sky.