Oil Painting Demonstration -- Clew Bay

This is the latest oil painting subject, Clew Bay. I have only just started this and hopefully I will be able to work on it over the next week or so, time permitting. The view is from the beginning of the route up Croagh Patrick, looking north across Clew Bay. In the above, I have sketched the initial scene in cobalt blue as accurately as I could. No I didn't trace!! I just took my time to get everything in the right place! I'm not including the buildings or car-park. I'm using a bit of artistic licence here. Also looks like a big thumbprint on my camera lens, will need to clean it!

Actually last Sunday was the annual pilgrimage up Croagh Patrick and several hundred if not a thousand or more people made the difficult trek to the summit. For the very first time ever, the Irish television network, RTE hauled cables and power and everything up the steep side of this mountain, (quite an effort as it took some days to do this) to allow them broadcast a Mass from the top of the mountain. This happened last Sunday at 10 am.

I climbed the mountain several years ago, with weather similar to the above photo. The view from the top is spectacular and you can see very distant parts of Mayo and down to Clare. The top is flat about the size of a football field but the north slope starts abruptly and is very steep. It is broken rock and scree and impossible to gain a hold on. If you descend onto it from the top, you will just keep sliding painfully down. The route up involves skirting left of this as you climb from the north and reaching the back of the mountain where it is not so bad. There are some sections of scree to climb past however and your foot sinks in among the small stones as you try to ascend. Some pilgrims climb barefoot!! Ouch!! The mountain is known for it's almost exact pyramidal shape, quite unique. Click here, Croagh Patrick to see a painting I did of this mountain from a beach which is to the north west, looking towards it. This was from a slide I took the weekend of my ascent.

Anyway, if people are interested in seeing the progress of this painting, check back to the blog from time to time over the next while... Should be some progress unless I get real busy.
Also, I hope to include a few articles on mixing colours in the blog. Mixing mauves, blues, greens or browns, etc for that just right shade. So sometime soon, I'll get around to that.

If interested, see earlier step by step snow scene painting demonstration.
Tomorrow I think it's time for the poetry corner...

Complementary Colour Scheme, Part IV of a Series

Complimentary Colour Schemes

Complementary colour schemes are easy to use and are very useful for creating highlights or areas of interest within a painting. They involve using two colours that are directly opposite each other on the colour wheel. The primary colour compliments are as follows:

Red -- Green

Blue -- Orange

Yellow -- Purple

Of course there are many ways to increase the variety of the system. A tint of a colour (that colour mixed with white) or a shade of a colour (the colour mixed with black) can be used in the scheme. Pink is a tint of red, and goes with light greens with nice effect. Imagine sweet pea against light green leaves. The photo above, courtesy of http://www.wetcanvas.com/ illustrates the combination of these colours. Complimentary colour schemes usually have one colour as the main or dominant and the other as the focal point or subordinant colour. The sparing use of the non-dominant colour allows the eye to immediately travel to the location where it is placed. If the complimentary colours are beside each other and both of intense value, then a high contrast can be created. This colour scheme by it's very nature creates such high contrast situations.

The photo below of geraniums is another example, red being the focal point, amid a more plentiful green background. Variety occurs from all the tints and shades present among the colours, and also there are slighty different tones of red or green, if examined closely. The intensity of the red, amid the complimentary green which is more muted in intensity, ensures the flower heads are where the eye is drawn.

Generally, the best effects occur where one of the colours is warm and the other is cool, blue and orange. Here is another example from VanGogh. Cafe in Arles at night. I have included two slightly different versions to illustrate the effect of colour intensity. Which do you prefer? The variation in intensity certainly alters the scene.

That's it for now. To see previous information regarding colour here are the links, monochromatic and analagous colour scheme, mixing neutral and semi-neutral colours, choosing a palette for painting. Enjoy exploring this ever-growing blog of art information, and my paintings too! You can see my next step-by step demonstration coming online over the next two weeks, so be sure to check in as I progress it. And if you like my art, be sure to share the blog with others. Thanks.

Oil Painting - Work from Last Year.

This was a painting I completed last summer. It is oil on canvas, 18"x 14", of a rapeseed field with a cherry tree. Last year I worked in the countryside, where there were many such fields. It was around this time that I began reading a lot about getting the intensity and values right in paintings. I still feel I have a lot to learn and there are a lot of things I can experiment with in increasing my knowledge of these. At the moment I am just enjoying each painting I do as a test in itself of increasing my ability, and trying not to get too over-whelmed at how much there is to learn. Value and colour intensity are really the most important aspects of painting.
The blog is short today as it's weekend and I have a lot of other things to do. Hope to post again during the week.