Rural Peace
Josh Reid used quality art materials and plenty of imagination for this exercise.
Good quality art materials combined with plenty of imagination and even some judicious use of the palette knife resulted in this large and ambitious painting.
STEP ONE
I drew the basic outline of the painting with charcoal, marking where I wanted some of the major detail such as the house – just trying to get locations on the canvas.
STEP TWO
I painted over the charcoal sketch with a light coat of oils in four basic background colours; and got rid of all the white canvas. For the sky I used Monastrel Cerulean (light blue) mixed with Titanium White. For the mountains I used Sap Green mixed with Prussian Blue. For the fields I chose Sap Green mixed with Titanium White; and the front grass area was done with Titanium White mixed with
Medium Yellow and Burnt Umber.
I also went over all the parts with a larger ‘turpsy’ brush and blended the background colours into each other – so each section had bits of all colours. I blended the transitions between each section, to give me a basic colour background to work off while still allowing plenty of flexibility to change lines.
STEP THREE
I got some darker coloured paint onto the background of the tall grass in the front section. I painted quite thickly, keeping in mind that I would go over all the dark brown bits with further colours using thinner brushes. I also made use of the excess colour by creating background shade areas in the field and mountain sections. I used Burnt Umber with a little Medium Yellow; and a Number 10 brush.
STEP FOUR
I mixed a cream colour using Titanium White and a dollop of Burnt Umber. With a smaller brush, I made a thick mix of the cream colour and applied thinner strokes over the brown background. The dark brown paint was still very wet, which allowed me to mix the cream into the brown with each stroke. I also used the cream to make the path in the foreground and in the field section. Most of the dark brown background colour was now covered over and mixed in with the cream colour. I made sure to leave remnants of the darker colour, in order to contrast nicely with the cream.
I always try to use a minimum of colours. I also like to use a bit of every colour in each section – I find this helps bring the entire painting together. Even the cream colour was made partially with the same colour used for the dark background.
STEP FIVE
I mixed Sap Green with Titanium White and a couple of dollops of Burnt Umber. I used a Number 10 brush to paint thick stripes of the loose mix over the mid section so that it started to describe the green valley. Then I mixed a bit of Green Light with Burnt Umber and spread that between the darker shade stripes. After I finished brushing the stripes, I grabbed a palette knife (about one inch long) and used it to run over the stripes
– flooding the various browns and greens onto each other. I also put a bit more Titanium White on the palette knife and layered it into the thick mix in three sections to create a contrast between the main greens.
I used a bit of paint left on the palette knife to create more background colours for the distant mountains.
STEP SIX
I ran out of Sap Green so I mixed a new darker green using Lemon Yellow and Prussian Blue. I also used Permanent Red 240 mixed with Prussian Blue to do the very distant mountain in the upper left of the picture. For the closer mountain, I used the green mix – doing short brush strokes with a Number 12 brush. This gave a nice effect over the previous colours. For the very distant mountains, I actually did some spiral circles with the same brush using the ‘purple’ mix.
It was a very large painting, so I wanted people to be able to admire it as a whole from a distance.
STEP SEVEN
Working again on the front grass section, I used several shades of Burnt Sienna and various amounts of white. I chose a small brush to do longer strokes – to make the grass a feature of the painting. I also used some Burnt Umber to shade in some vacant sections of the painting. I finished it up with very thick strokes of Titanium White, to add a bit of tone. I highlighted the dirt road leading down to the property; and added a bit of shading into the other two sections of the painting.
STEP EIGHT
I added the thin path using Titanium White with a light brown tint. I then made a new mix of green using Cobalt Blue Hue and Medium Yellow – I used this to put in the background colour of the trees.
STEP NINE
I mixed up a new batch of light blue for the sky, using Titanium White and Monastrel Cerulean. I got a large brush a paint thick layers of the blue over the original sky colour.
With a mix of white and Burnt Umber, I lightly went over the leafless white trees. I added the fence lines using the same colour mix. I added a bit of Permanent Red to the rocks; and also used it as a background colour for the house, the shed and the sheep – in order to give those objects a bit of depth. I also got some Light Green and Burnt Umber mix to add light to the trees and the field.
FINAL STEP
After a few final touch-ups, I had the finished product.