Sunday Quickie

It’s been a while since I challenged myself to do a fast painting so today I decided to give it a go. I wanted to complete a small, full-colour painting in one hour.

I chose a photo taken last spring (Sept-Nov in Australia) of canola fields near my home. I did a small pencil sketch with colour notes and this was my working reference during painting.

It was a cloudy day so much of the landscape was in shadow but there was a strip of bright sunlight across the canola.

My one hour starts now…

I began with a simple wash in two tones, leaving the lightest areas white.

Starting in the sky, I began to block in final colours. I laid in an undertone of greens in the foreground.

I used cadmium yellow deep as an undertone for the brighily lit canola.

I laid cadmium yellow light over the sunlit strip and painted the foreground canola flowers with mixtures of cadmium yellow light and French ultramarine. There are hints of yellow ochre in the near foreground to help bring it forward. I fidgeted a little with the trees and background, making small adjustments to colours and tones.

All up it took about one and a half hours. I might use this to do a larger painting in the near future. Keep watch. [UPDATE: See the larger painting here]

Here’s a grey-scale conversion of the final image which shows the tonal contrast of the various areas.