I shot this reference shot of the Truckee River in early Spring not too far from Tahoe City. There hasn't been much snow, but even if there had been, it's too early for much run-off and the river usuallly runs pretty slow this time of year. I really liked the meandering feel so I decided to do a painting...this is my progress.
1.) I prepped my canvas by toning it with a burnt-orange color mixed quite thinly with Turpenoid as I usually do. 2.) I also loosely sketched in my major elements as I typically do.
4.) I mix a lighter color of the sky and paint it in as well, mixing about twice as much color as I think I'll need. I'll explain in a moment. I leave a rough outline of my trees. I actually try to overlap the area where the trees will be a little.
3.) I immediately begin to paint in my sky right on top of the still-wet under paint, making sure to use plenty of my medium which is a mix of alkyd, walnut oil and Turpenoid.
5.) I follow by laying in the dark areas of my trees and as you can see in the photo above, I allow the portions that cross into the sky to mix pretty freely with the sky color. This is because trees aren't solid and a lot of the sky shows through their boughs causing the eye to average the two colors...not uniformly of course, but roughly overall. 6.) As things receed from you, they have a tendency to lose color saturation. They also seem first to lose yellow from the full spectrum of light, then red. This is because atmoshphere filters those two colors in that order as reflected light passes through it. That's why mountains in the distance appear purple and then very far off, blue and lighter as they go. Since I'm working with paint, I can't subtract color out of my paint, I can only try to approximate what the eye sees, so I can lighten and add blue to the receeding parts (like subtracting yellow and red and desaturating) by adding the extra sky color I mixed up to the dark color of my trees as they recede.
<<<...Back
© Mike Callahan. All Rights Reserved.