Sketch a simple scene with paint

A simple sketch to define the different areas of the painting is helpful.

Below, you can Read how I do it, and you can Watch over my shoulder in the Video

Video – 4 minutes 40 secs

After this it will be time to start painting over our sketch.
I’ll paint the distant hills and lay a foundation for the fields.

But that’s for next time…

I have included the transcript below – It has made me notice silly things, like saying ‘there’ and ‘here’, instead of the word telling you exactly where. Well you would expect that wouldn’t you, if you were there!

I think I could put a few descriptive words here and there (ha ha) for those who need it. What do you think? I’ve added a couple in [square] brackets…

Transcript of this video

I’ll take a bit of red to Sketch out a thin, vague idea of a …

What shall we do?
We’ll have a little field with a little hill behind and perhaps some trees coming here [mid distance on the right],
perhaps some bushes down here [bottom left].
That can be trees round there [do I neeed to carry on with the brackets?]

Just a little bit of what I might do.

Let’s have some trees along here and perhaps let the bushes come in again here.
Let the field come towards us I think.
It’s quite nice.
And here, just roughly, in red, to define it.

I don’t really know what I’m going to do here.
Sit down to demonstrate something without having any idea of what!

Anyway, the point is, you make a thinnish thing (paint).
And sketch things out – if you want to, you can be a bit more detailed.
Say you want to give some idea of where these plants are going to go.
You can do that.
And again there…
Let’s say that that’s an open meadow, that might have quite a nice curve to it, I suppose.

And let’s have a little hill in the background, a couple of little hills.
Yea, that could be high as well.
Then we’ve got a distant hill, a middling sort of hill and you can still have your plants going up, your trees going up higher if you want.
But this is quite a short stand of trees, so that’s going to be quite a lot in the distance.

There it is, vaguely laid out, OK.

Try to get rid of excess paint before you rinse out.
I tend to sort of do it, (I don’t know if you can see) I tend to do it a few times and then give it a jolly good rinse.
Notice there’s hardly any left suspended in the water.
That wasn’t very thick anyway, be?? there.

Now, as I say, I don’t really know what I’m going to paint, but we’ve got a bit of red paint there, so let’s make use of it, because we can come over this.

=== changes the brush to a stiffer one ==

I’m going to put in some stronger patches without covering everything.
As we go on, bits of the other colour will come through.
It’s probably going to end up quite nice and dark there …
Let’s get a bit of balance (into the composition).
We’ll do the opposite corner, like that.
This bit might end up rather dark so we can afford to put something on there
because we’ll be painting over that again anyway.

So it’s kind of – already it’s something that is an enclosed meadow, or something.

It’s just to try out the paint, isn’t it?
Just to give you an idea of how you can set about doing it.

=== Starts some different types of strokes ===

Perhaps a bit of – Can you see, how that, you can rub it on and just have colour coming through because it’s slightly drying?

It’s very hot under this light I’ve got on, just to film it, so it’s probably going to dry off a bit quicker than it would for you.

Anyway, there we go.

Ah! I just use a pad (as a palette). Smooth paper for kids,
but I just used a pad. Look at that.

Because it’s starting to go damp (I meant dry) on the brush I just dampened it to stop it solidifying.
Then I’m rubbing it in the tissue, though I recommend cotton rags, but this is what I had handy on this day, when I spent all my time searching for the stuff I need.
I don’t come down here often enough.
There.

So I might just carry on because it dries off as you go until you can’t use it any more,
until it really – ‘cos you can pull off lumps of paint.

Anyway, that’s flexible and nice and clean, ready for the next time I use it.