You may have noticed , that I have been trying my hand at a few landscapes recently. This piece was influenced by a watercolour I saw online, I loved the way the sun shone through the trees and wanted to try it for myself.
So I sketched out a landscape, with mountains and trees, and masked off a small circle for the sun.
Then I flooded the sky with yellow ochre.
Making the tones much stronger around the sun, even adding some orangy brown tones.
I then followed that though into the distant mountains., then dropped in some purple tones using cadmium red and cobalt blue
Then I let everything dry.
Now I am beginning to add tree silhouettes , around the sun, I have rubbed off the masking fluid at this stage. I am using greys made with cobalt blue and burnt umber, and some raw sienna.
Smudge out the rays of the sun using a damp piece of kitchen roll
Now we are moving forward, adding hills and mountains that are nearer to us so the colours will be brighter.
I add more colours and tones and add more trees. The colours are warmer where they are kissed by the sun.
I have also added a sprinkling of ordinary table salt to add texture.
Keep your palette clean, and keep refreshing your water so the tones don't get too muddy.
Now it is all dry I want to go back into it and work some more.
Adding darks, adding detail. More colour here and there , I even scratched out some tree trunks using a palette knife.
I added some more colour around the sun and defined the trees a bit more too, and my winter, imaginary landscape is done.
