Week 2 - Montana Painting Begins

Spent the morning trying to set up this blog - by 11am was fed up, so headed to the studio.

My parents have commissioned me to paint a large scale oil painting for their 'cabin' in Montana. The scale of the building is large so the canvas is large - 1m by 1m40 (56in x 40in) . Scary.
I was initially very excited but now it has dawned on me that I have not done a painting on this scale (in oil or watercolour) for a long time. Did I say it was a bit scary?

So first I decided to tackle that canvas and at least get something on it - the first job was to put the image on. We have been discussing this for some time - so we had our image picked out and had discussed painting style, etc. It is a very pretty mountain scene with Sailor Lake in the foreground. Quite traditional, but I think a nice image with a lot of potential. I've put that on the canvas with the help of a projector...sometimes technology is so great!

The second job was to work out the colour scheme - I want to vamp up the original colours (a la California Expressionism) so I followed the process I have used in the past : I did some preliminary watercolours before starting in with oil. This would also help me get to 'know' the composition, which would allow me to make decisions much more easily as I was painting.

To be honest, I am not that happy with the watercolours - but I guess it is better to be unhappy with a watecolour that took you an hour, than a painting you've already spent 20 hours on?

The first watercolour was was definitely over-worked. Sometimes you have to take things too far before you know how far too far is - if that makes any sense.
The second is better - I'm making some sense of how the trees are 'built' which is important as they run right across the middle of the canvas. I'm happier with the sky colour - a nice cerulean blue. The colours of the mountain in the background are still stumping me. The colours overall are not unified enough. So definitely need to do more work there.

Next step is to get some larger, and lightened printouts of my mountain image and keep going with the watercolours until I am happy - and then we can start in with the oil!