Refreshing Waters for Oscar - Day 6 of the 30 day challenge

Refreshing Waters for Oscar

18x24cm 

Oil on MDF canvas panel

NFS

One of my nephews saw and older, large painting while he was here and fell in love with it. I promised to paint him a similar painting but smaller for his birthday in October. This is it.

About this painting

This is a favourite spot of ours in the summer. The river is Le Loup and at this point it goes through a mini canyon. In the hot days it is a cool and refreshing spot to sit and refresh ourselves under the shade of the trees. If we have visitors, especially children, they love to play in the cool, clear water which comes directly from the mountains. It still needs a few finishing touches when the paint has firmed up a bit.

Tarn Gorges palette knife painting

Tarn Gorges

Oil on Canvas panel

35x27 cm (14"x11")
Painted on an MDF panel,
mounted on an additional white painted panel to give a border.
Final size to fit inside a standard frame.

I painted this, my first all knife painting from a very old photograph I found in the back of the drawer.

Here is a brief description of my progress:

I first drew in the large masses using a watercolour pencil and then blocked in the lights using warm colours and the darks using cool colours. I used a light yellow for the lightest part to make sure that this area would look nice and sunny. I then gradually added colour wet into wet, in an extra 3 to 4 layers. The first to make the colour look 'real', the second to break up the masses into 3 or 4 areas depending on the light, the third to refine the colour in the masses and the fourth layer for the refinement. I used only pure colour, mainly mixing it on the painting as I went along. I also worked to keep the shadows not too dark but just dark enough.