Plein air adventure – Mont Blanc at minus 6

Here’s a video of a recent expedition to paint at a height of more than 3800 metres (12,500 feet) following in the footsteps of two mountaineering and painting pioneers, (not literally as I went up by cable car! :))

I hope you enjoy it and are inspired to get out and paint!

For more info on my Butterfly easel – www.diyeasel.com/butterfly.html

See the amazing paintings by James Hart Dyke – https://jameshartdyke.com

Thanks for being with me on this painting adventure.

#enpleinair #montblanc #chamonix #jameshartdyke #gabrielloppe #mountainpainting #oilpainting #aiguilledumidi

When paintings go wrong – how to rescue a failure

Let me show you how I rescued this Plein air painting from the point of disaster.

I’m on a painting trip (and 25th wedding anniversary holiday) in Annecy in the french Alps. Actually the order should be the other way around – anniversary first!

Yesterday we went out on the bus to a small town called Thônes to sightsee and paint, and my eye was caught by this mountain peak (below).

It may not look much in the photo, but it was more impressive in real life. That’s why cameras are not that good at capturing the sense of space or the emotion of a place. They tend to flatten everything. Better to paint or sketch it…

So I set up my Butterfly Easel and got to work, only disturbed occasionally by passing hikers, the odd dog, and a couple of tractors. That was until the rain set in, necessitating a hasty retreat and a hunt for cover.

Here is what I managed to do onsite and in the time available There are bits I like – the mountain and sky are good, as are the distant dark pine trees. But the foreground is a real mess! I had already painted in the house as well as the barn, while something in the back of my brain was shouting at me not to! That would create two competing centres of interest (the mountain peak, and the buildings). A painting only needs to be about one thing. If it ends up being about two things, then we lose the plot and confuse the viewer.

So the main building was wiped off. But I left the barn. I tried to liven things up by changing the colour of the trees to the autumn oranges that were beginning to appear, but these jarred a bit with the other colours. The lack of strong tonal contrast also annoyed me. I returned home knowing I had half a decent painting (the top half) and a mess to sort out (the bottom half).

The rescue!

I needed a plan. More to the point, I needed a tonal value plan. So I sketched one in my notepad.

I sketched out the basic lines and then used a pencil and a black fineliner to add in mid-tones and darks, trying to feel my way around the painting and create pathways for the viewer. I moved the barn to the right and made it smaller and also raised the eyeline a little. This all looked better, so it was time to go back to the painting, with an idea about how to proceed.

I wiped off the foreground with a rag and water (this is easy with water-mixable oils), and then repainted according to my tonal sketch.

Now there is a clarity to the foreground which was just a jumble before, and the eye is lead into the painting and up to the mountain peak in an S shape (along the road, across to the barn, then up to the peak.

Alpine Peak, Thônes. Oil 8″ X 10″

We’re a million miles away from the original failed painting. But not that far from the original scene. OK, I’ve moved a few things, eliminated a few things (including someone’s home), and adjusted a few things. But that is what painting is all about. We create, not copy. I think I’ve saved it from the bin.

I hope you have found this of interest. Please give it a thumbs up if you have.

#enpleinair #compositioninart #Tonalvalues #learningtopaint #oilpainting #Annecy

White light (creating shadow and light the Colley Whisson way)

I’ve always admired the amazing light effects that the Australian artist Colley Whisson achieves in his oil paintings. They seem to glow with light. So when I was watching his latest YouTube video I studied how he created this powerful effect. It seemed to me that he just painted the local colour that was in shadow, then added white to this colour and applied it on top for the sunlit areas. That seemed too simple!

So I messaged him on the video comments:

“I’m always really impressed by the way you capture light and shadows. Is your light here just the local shadow colour plus white? That simple?”

He wrote back, “Yes, it’s basically that easy. I like to think, ‘Where I see light I need plenty of white.’

So I thought I’d give it a go.

Figs for tea. Water-mixable oil 6″ x 6″

I chose this still life because I wanted to test out the theory at home without the distractions of being outdoors (and also because we have an abundance of figs at the moment!).

The dark blue shadow and the dark brown shadow under the rim of the saucer were painted first and also the shadows under the figs. Then I just added white to these colours to paint in the well-lit cloth on the table. It worked! Quickly and simply I had light and shadow that seemed to just work together naturally.

All that remained was to try this out on a landscape painting and see how it works with foliage etc.

So I went to the end of our garden which overlooks the valley below and had a go at painting the shadows cast by the olive trees. I used my DIY butterfly easel and water-mixable oils for this.

Now, to me, the shadows on the pale ochre earth look a bluish-purple. This is caused by the yellow light from the sun (the other side of the colour wheel). So I painted some of the shadows with this colour, and some with a dark brown, before adding white to it to make the sunlit earth colour. The jury is out as to which looked better – the purple or the dark brown shadows.

Evening shadows 10″ x 12″ oil

Interestingly enough, Colley Whisson often uses this purple shadow colour instead of the local colour, (see the example below). You can see however how he has also used the darker local colour of the sand in the vertical face of the cliff, and added white to this to make the sunlit sand. So he has used both techniques in this one shadow shape. The blue-purple of the shadow on the horizontal ground plane is reflecting colour from the blue sky above, and the sandy-brown of the shadowed cliff face is just the natural unlit colour of the sand. Adding white to this makes the sunlit sand.

This colour change also helps us interpret the horizontal and vertical elements of the picture. Without it, if the whole shadow were purple or brown, we would not see the cliff face as being separate from the sand below.

So I guess it’s a case mixing it up. Use the colours wisely and for the effect you want. Then add white to create the sunshine!

I hope this has been a useful post. Please give a thumbs up below if it has, and make any comments. I’d love to hear your views and ideas on this topic.

Once again, thanks for subscribing!

#ColleyWhisson #howtopaintlight #paintingshadows #oilpainting #watermixableoils #paintinglight #howtopaintshadows