Steve Fleming

Artist Studio

Steve Fleming

In The Studio: Number 62 of 90 Paintings in 90 Days, “Along the Road”

The Artist In The Studio

Again this is a painting about trying to capture the light on a fairly simple and generic scene, you can work out all of the complicated compositions in the world but if you are not comfortable with expressing the light in your watercolor than all of the complexity in the world will just be noise.  Learn to cast shadows on the objects in the color of the object, practice with all the colors you paint with and put a convincing light wash down and then the appropriate shadow.  This will pay off down the road.Run the sky wash down and around the buildings using a nice cool sky color and a fairly cool greenish grey for the distant landscape.Paint the foreground with a lively application of paint and with a nice variety of warm yellows and greens scraping highlight out with a sharp knife point.Paint the main barn cutting around the suggestion of the figures.  The color I used for the light side of the barn is a mixture of cadmium scarlet, raw sienna, perm rose and burnt sienna and ultramarine blue with enough water to say light.detail of cutting around the figures, try not to get too careful but keep them human!

Paint the shadows with a darker version of the light color that was used for the barn, just use a touch less water and remember to make your edges interesting.  Paint the figures and add some dark accents.detail of area around figures and barn, this image is too dark, the original painting is a little lighter.

1 Comments on “In The Studio: Number 62 of 90 Paintings in 90 Days, “Along the Road””

  1. I have understod fully todays post. Photographs, especially in the details, make it all easier. Steve, you’re a great teacher. Thank you for sharing

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