Shift Happens

Share Parelli

Adobe House, the saga continues

Up bright and surly this morning to work on the painting and get other tasks done before the need to run and find electric fencing supplies to finish the pasture fence at my mother's old pasture.
I glazed and defined more of the shadow areas with my favorite shadow mixture of burnt umber and ultramarine blue and lots of Liquin. Then back into the foliage of the trees to add better midtones and some highlights on the leaves. More color washes on the grass and a bit of color change happening on the two horses in the foreground. I know the front horse is a brighter chestnut than the one beside her, although the reference photos showed Missy darker and Ginger lighter, so I am adjusting their coat as I go along. Rather like shedding out for spring!
Now let this dry and try not to monkey with it until it does. There are times to paint into the "soup" ( I forget which artist used to call it that) and times to leave it to dry and glaze and scumble.

First color

When I start a painting, after the underpainting is dry, I like to try and put color all over the painting. Not the exact colors, but more a loose, sketchy, color reference that strengthens the total work. The day I started the first color layer, for whatever reason, I was interrupted and had to cover the paints and leave the painting about half done. Today I was able to devote the morning to putting on the color layer. There is no attention to details. The shadow areas in oil are usually painted first. In the background, this is done and lighter leaf colors will be painted on top of this later. In the foreground, since the lane is in the dappled light of the trees, the shadows will be added later as a glaze on top of the road color. You can still see the underpainting peeking through the color layer. After this dries in a day or so, I will start concentrating on more details, but trying to work over the entire painting at the same time and not over do one area.