Friday, April 08, 2011

German Lane

I submitted a piece to this week's DPW Painting Challenge. As I painted, I took several in-progress shots:
I printed out Carol's photo and cropped it with a couple of scraps of mat board.
I then took a canvas panel and underpainted it lightly with napthol red acrylic paint. When that was dry, I quickly sketched in a basic layout with a combination of ultramarine blue and quinacridone red oils thinned with Gamsol.


I started with the darks and placed large shapes. I was trying to pay attention to value relationships when I put in the sky and the road. I re-painted those several times!
I was using the photo as inspiration and decided to just go with it to please my eye. I am happy with how it ended up! I had a hard time taking a photo though because of the grain of the canvas and the glare.
"German Lane",  6 x 6 , oil on canvas board

4 comments:

laura said...

Gorgeous! I love the blue of the background trees and the colors in the road. As a watercolorist I'm jealous of how oil painters can paint over red and allow just a peep of it to show, causing vibrations ... Matisse did this beautifully in his Morocco paintings: turquoise edged in red--exquisite!

Karla said...

This is a very nice painting!

Nancy L. Vance said...

Thanks to both of you!! ;-)

Linda Hill said...

I need to learn how to use more colors in the background. Just love how this turned out!