Leisure Painter — June 2017

Paint along with LP

even quite lurid within a painting.

The good news is there are ways of

mixing greens to avoid this, and methods

that we can draw on to help evoke the

atmosphere and appearance of spring.

The composition

Our reference photograph shows a typical

spring scene, and has the basis of a good

composition. There is some important

variety in the tree forms, but this will

benefit from a bit of simplifying and

enhancement in places.

When working from photographs there

is normally some sorting out to be done,

and small sketches can be the best way

of doing it. We can aim to draw emphasis

to certain areas, and minimise detail

where there is visual confusion. The

photograph is also lacking in direct

sunshine and is therefore quite low on

tonal contrasts. We can alter this in a

sketch, too, providing more

counterchange (light against dark and

vice versa), which will help to define the

forms more distinctly. The two sketches

(above right) show how I’ve worked

through this. It’s important not to feel the

sketching process is anything other than

functional, so you needn’t be neat nor

work large scale.

In Sketch A(top right) I reduced the

composition to its most basic shapes. We

can see how the painting will have good

depth, with distinct areas of foreground

(shown in thick line), middle ground

(shown in thin line) and background

(shown in dotted line). Identifying these

areas helps us to plan the stages into

which the painting can be broken down,

but I also simplified the forms, picking

out essential characteristics, such as

different types of tree shapes and

exaggerating them slightly for visual

interest. See how the tree foliage is quite

sparse in places, with branches still

visible. This is an essential characteristic

of spring trees.

A

key to depicting the natural

landscape is to look for difference

in the forms, and enhance what

variety you find. It helps differentiate

your masses when dealing with foliage,

and avoids monotony on the eye. I like

to think of trees as my ‘characters’ in

a painting, and always aim to bring out

what personality they have. As ever,

this comes down to observation.

In terms of colour, at first sight there

can appear to be little variation when we

look at such a subject. Once spring is in

full swing, there is a profusion of bright

greens, which although beautiful to

experience can seem overpowering or

20 JUNE 2017 http://www.painters-online.co.uk

Part 1 Build your colour-mixing confidence as you mix spring greens

for painting a landscape from a photograph, with Jem Bowden

Painting project

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

nPractise your composition skills

nMix greens from raw sienna,

Winsor blue (red shade), Indian

red and cadmium yellow

tThe photograph for this month’s painting project: a spring landscape

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