North Superior Coast and Killarney Pines

I have been working through some sketches lately to arrive at 5 or 6 pictures that I can work up into large canvases. The first 2 have been on my easel for the last couple of days. I have taken some photos to show a bit of the process of how I work them up.

North Superior Coast

Here is the under painted  30 x 40 canvas. I prefer to work with wet on wet. The colours are applied on a wet warm coloured ground. As a fall scene, little chips of this ground that show through should add to the overall warmth.  Here I am building the mid tones and the shadows. There will be a lot of green in the darkened foreground - in the underpainting I am working in purples to make the green more luminous when they are overpainted.

The colour is built up evenly across the whole canvas - balance is important so I am not focusing on one specific area - just working evenly across the whole picture.

And getting close to the final picture - a few more touches and it will be completed.

Killarney Pines

One of the most interesting places I have canoed is Killarney Park - the white stone there is really striking - it takes on the colour of the surrounding light. That's the thinking behind this image - the sketch is high contrast - bright sky with almost sillohetted pines and rock. But the rock (being almost) white also takes on the colour of the sky.

The under painting begins for the 40 X 30 version - composition is important with a simple bold images like this  so if I get it right in the sketch, I want to maintain it for the larger canvas - a grid is used to scale up the sketch to ensure the balance is similar. I have added in a few more trees at the larger size - to providing more visual interest.

Here is the final painting - the white rocks are reflecting the blue of the sky - the pines almost seem to be surrounded by water - but they are at the top of Silver Peak - the highest mountain in Killarney.