Time Lapse of Barn Painting

Here's a short time lapse video of a plein air painting done near our studio in Flat Rock, North Carolina at the Carl Sandburg home and barn which is now a National Historic Site.

Clicking on the image below will take you to the YouTube video.

 

ORIGINAL PAINTING
"Sandburg Barn"
9x12" / Acrylic on board

Painting Late Afternoon Light

Here are a few step by step comments on a recent painting titled "Saluda - Last Light". 

I began with a 9x12" Masonite board primed with Gesso. I toned the board with a thin coat of Ultramarine Blue applied by simply wetting the board slightly with a mist bottle and then squirting the paint from the tube directly onto the board and wiping it around the entire surface. Most often I tone my boards with Burnt Sienna to give me a warm tone but in this case with the disappearing evening light I wanted to give an overall look of very cool tones. This would in the final piece give more emphasis to the warm tones by contrast.

I drew the basic shapes of the building with a brush and then began adding the dark using only transparent colors. If I were to use opaque colors at this point they would begin to cover the blue areas and not allow that blue to show through.

Here you can see some areas of the buildings and background that were painted using rather thin layers of paint allowing the Ultramarine Blue to glow through. Other areas such as the sky were painted with thicker opaque color.

I took the original photo as reference knowing it would be very dark but I wanted to capture the mood with its dimmly lit passages. I used the photo on the left primarily to work on the final painting but I also duplicated the photo and in Photoshop lightened it which gave a better look at the detail that was not evident in the original. I was careful not to take too much information from the overexposed photo as I did not want to loose the feeling of the scene by adding lots of features that were not necessary to convey the mood of the painting.

ORIGINAL PAINTING
"Saluda - Last Light"
9x12" / Acrylic on board

Painting the pumpkins

Here are a few step by step comments on a recent painting titled "Pumpkins on the Hearth".

I began with a 16x20" Masonite board primed with Gesso. I toned the board with a thin coat of Burnt Sienna applied by simply wetting the board slightly with a mist bottle and then I squirted the paint from the tube directly onto the board and wiped it around the entire surface. I then drew the basic shapes on the board with charcoal.

I'm using acrylics which dry fast allowing me to apply glazes easily but at this point I'm simply blocking in the colors and values. The Burnt Sienna undertone helps to more easily unify the painting. I'm using mostly transparent colors at first to get rich dark tones.

This process continues being careful not to get carried away with any detail until I'm sure that the placement and values of each object is where I want it to be.

This block in continues carefully but freely using paints that are quite thin at this point.

Now I begin to refine some areas of the pumpkins to give them form where the light it hitting them from the window.

The detail starts to build using simple forms and heavier paints are applied as the painting progresses.

The leaves in the window and on the hearth start to take shape but I kept them as loosly undefined shapes until this point which kept the painting fresh.

Finally touches of detail such as rim lighting on the leaves of the plant near the window and a few individual kernals of corn (not easily seen in the photo) are added.