Steve Fleming

Artist Studio

Steve Fleming

In The Studio: Number 65 of 90 Paintings in 90 Days, “Winter, smoke and mist”

The Artist In The Studio

This painting is dark and gray, although the reproduction is a little lighter, I want you to make this dark and gloomy.  The lifts in the sky and across the background hills were achieved with a damp not wet paper towel at just the moment when the glisten has left the paper.  Roll the paper towel and only touch the paper with a clean piece of the paper towel.  If not you will be pushing dirty grays back into the paper.

Paint a dark sky using olive green, cobalt blue and a little burnt sienna, immediately paint the brown gray trees with burnt sienna, and olive green.  Before this dries paint the cool distant hills and make the lift, don’t wait.  Start painting the dark trees on the left overlapping the sky and house. Get this dark and rich in color.  Finish the dark trees on the left using vigorous brush work, this mixture is burnt sienna, thalo green, olive green and raw sienna.  I want to remind you that this type of dark mixture is not all of the colors mixed into one mix and then spread all over the trees like butter.  You add the colors selectively trying to get variety all across the shape.

Paint the road with a light cool gray and brush in the loose indication of the tree reflections on the road.  Use the scraper to put some highlights on the road.

Paint some details on the buildings and darken the the figure.

first detail of the mist and smoke.

detail of smoke and mist

2 Comments on “In The Studio: Number 65 of 90 Paintings in 90 Days, “Winter, smoke and mist””

  1. This post is incredibly interesting. It touches on two issues very difficult to express, the smoke and fog. You embroider the explanation without hiding the tips. Another difficult issue in composition is to represent a trail or a river that rises up and turns winding, in good perspective, so that it does not appear as vertical. I am delighted to have discovered these old posts, when I did not know you still. They are magnificent. It would have hurt me much miss me them. I never tire of thanking you.

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