Paint distant hills and define the field

Now it’s time to start painting over our sketch.
I’ll paint the distant hills and lay a foundation for the fields.

Would you like to see the demonstration? Scroll down to find the 4 minute video on this page.

There’s a transcript to read below the video.

Look out for the next message when I will begin to paint the sky and make a start on the forest…  and I’ll add a little to the field.

Video – 4 minutes 15 secs

Transcript of this video

This is the second video in a series demonstrating stages of an un-planned painting.

Before I use paint I wet my brush, just enough so that it absorbs easily.

I’ll make a purple colour for the distance…
– gosh, this light is so hot it’s drying everything on my palette!

Doesn’t hurt to start cautiously – and be a bit bolder once it’s marked in.

There’s your distant Hill

== cleans brush ==

I clean my brush often and especially if I’m changing to a different one.
Dip and clean – a good habit to develop.

I’m letting it be thin in places because you can always do something with it later.

I’m not being terribly careful about the mixing because it’s quite nice when it mixes unevenly and colours make streaks.
As you can see, it can mix as you work into the painting.

This is really just to get you started, we can always change it later.

I think we more or less decided where the edge of that field is.
We can put some colour in there behind the trees. about the same kind of green as the field beyond that might show through, so when we come to do the trees we can leave a bit of that showing through the foliage.
Then it’ll be there ready if we need it, ok.

As I said, this is not planned – not a carefully planned painting by any means, so I’ll put some directional lines to guide me next time.

Since this is a made-up scene, I need to think about the direction of the light falling on it – and I’ll put some guides in the field to show parts catching the light.
It might have been sown in lines and have a pattern.

I’m not quite sure why I picked that particular angle, it’s just what my hand wanted to do.

I made it a bit darker there, near the bottom of the canvas, to give the idea that it’s closer and bigger too, so
Fatter at the near, bottom end and thinner at the other where it’s supposed to be further away.

I’m just putting on some paint to get an idea really, including a tiny little bit of blue before I stop.

We’ll see how it develops – we’ll see…