Building a Painting

 This painting was done in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here's a brief description of how I proceeded with this piece.The canvas was 24x28". I applied a wash of burnt sienna and maybe some burnt umber onto the canvas by simply spraying the canvas with an atomizer then squirting paint directly out of the tube onto the canvas and wiping it around to create a textured tone.

 I didn't feel the need to draw anything on the painting with charcoal or penci but rather began directly with my brush using dark tones.

 I built up the areas that had large shapes and values trying to create a pleasing pattern.

 I then began to add color using the cooler colors for the distant mountains. This blue doesn't look right next to the warm sky but you can see in the next picture that when the sky was applied above it, the blue fell into place.

Here I continued to refine the patterns and began to add detail to areas such as the tree on the left.

 Patterns of light and dark were established and in the finished piece below highlights and accents of color were added including sunlight on the road which gave a focus to the painting leading the eye down into the valley and the farm area.