Today’s painting is a simple little composition about using a yellow based palette to get a feeling of light. I have pushed the subject matter very high in the picture plane and put the houses behind the ground, which gives a nice feeling of overlap and makes the simple houses a more interesting group of shapes. My palette is Hanza Yellow, Raw Sienna, Thalo Yellow Green, Alizirin Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Cobalt and Cerulean Blue and Olive Green. I really tried to get a strong feeling of yellow in all of my mixes.
I used a 1.5 in sky flow brush and was pretty free with the brush work. I left white in the sky and a little white hook piece in the lower right corner. I cleaned up the sky whites with a damp paper towel.
I brushed in some colorful far in the distance land and follage using cerulean blue, olive green and alizirin crimson. I improved the top edge of the foreground shape with some dry brush and darker pieces of color.
I brushed in some tree forms using a dark mixture of the greens, and cobalt blue. I merged into these pieces strong pieces of hanza yellow and alizirin crimson. Use a round brush and really move the brush around to get some nice expressive texture on the trees.
I then scraped out some tree highlights, and mixed up a nice colorful shadow color for the buildings. This color is alizirin, cobalt blue and a touch of raw sienna. Try brush the shadow on right the first time so you don’t loose the translucency of the color.