May Workshop

After a very successful oil painting workshop in March, Gallery 500 have invited me to do another workshop in May.

Workshops run for around four hours on a Saturday morning and students paint along with me as I break down my process of painting sunlight into easily managed stages.

The techniques demonstrated suit either plein air or studio painting. While I paint in oils, the approach works equally well for acrylics.

If you're interested in attending, contact Brad at Gallery 500 in Albany, WA.

Kendenup Rail Bridge

Here's the plein air painting I did last weekend near Kendenup...

 (Kendenup Rail Bridge. 30x20cm oil on board. © Andy  Dolphin)

It's far from perfect but it was an unusual subject or me and presented quite a number of challenges from perspective to tonal contrasts to colour to reflections. Plus, the sun was setting fast so all these things had to be dealt with without much thought.

At one point I thought I'd lost it completely but I pushed on and once I'd mapped in the major highlight areas in the foreground and on the bridge pillars, it didn't look so bad so I continued with it. From here on I added most colour and tone from memory as the scene had changed dramatically in a short time.

I hope to go back soon and try again, from a lower angle so we can see the width of the bridge.

Perfect weather

While summer was colder and wetter than we usually get down here, autumn has been spectacular so far. The last few days in particular were hot with mostly cloudless skies, day and night.

I took the opportunity this afternoon to go an paint a subject I noticed a long time ago.

This bridge carries the Great Southern railway line over a small creek near Kendenup. That trickle of water is probably more than it usually has at this time of year.

Plein air painters have a phrase "chasing the light" and I experienced it full on in this painting.

I started about 4pm, as the sun was casting a shadow of the steel bridge on the creek bed. It was 5pm by the time I finished and, as shown above, the whole scene was in the shadow of the distant trees.

I had to establish major shadow positions and angles at the start and try not to "chase the light" as the major shadow moved away from the bridge and toward me, which it did quite rapidly. I used a limited palette of four colours plus white to save time.

It was a subject I've never tackled before and quite a challenge. I might go back another day and try a slightly lower angle so I see a little of the underside of the bridge as this would give me a nice strong shadow tone and probably some warm reflected light. I hope there's still a bit of water flowing when I get there.

I'll post the finished picture when I can get a good photo of it. In the meantime, here's the plein air painting I did near Woodanilling a few weeks ago...

(Near Woodanilling. 20x22cm oil on board. © Andy  Dolphin)

Woolorama time again

Yesterday I drove about 200km to Wagin to deliver some paintings for the Woolorama art exhibition which takes place in a couple of weeks. It was a hot, humid day with clear skies and a gentle breeze.

On the way home, I deviated down a few back roads looking for "something different" that I could stop and paint. I found it on the road to Woodanilling. The tree was interesting and the light blinding. There was space to park the car and a shady tree to stand beneath.

I had no excuse not to paint.

We normally think of shadows as cool and highlights as warm but these trees seem to have a warm, peachy glow about their trunks, even in the shaded parts. Finding a colour and tone that would convey that warmth whilst still allowing the strongly sunlit highlights to jump was an interesting challenge.

I'll post the finished image when I can photograph it properly.

Strange summer!

Large parts of Australia have been hit with extreme weather this summer. Northern Queensland was hit by floods and then perhaps the largest cyclone on record. Meanwhile, northern and central WA and Victoria have also suffered exceptional flooding. You need to visualise the size of the Australian continent to grasp the area that's been affected. It's ridiculously huge.

Whilst we haven't been personally affected by any of these events, this has been the weirdest summer we've had down south since leaving Perth over seven years ago. February is normally hot and dry, with temperatures in the forties not out of the question. This year, however, we've had the threat of a cyclone, though we're nowhere near the tropics, and of a surprise storm that devastated some southern towns but never quite made it this far. What we have had is day after day of drizzle and rain, often with gusty winds. I think we've only seen clear skies for about four days this month.

With only one week left before autumn arrives, I'm hoping for some opportunities to get out and paint some summer sunlight. In the meantime, I'm managing the odd painting indoors. Here's this week's contribution...

(Evening glow, Porongurup. 30x45cm oil on board. © Andy  Dolphin)

This painting was based on a couple of plein air works I did last month. I took a little licence with the lighting since I have seen it turn warm on previous occasions. I kept the mountains simple as I wanted the white sand track to catch the viewer's attention and for the large tree to stand out against an atmospheric backdrop.

Here are the two plein air studies I used as reference.

(Porongurup track. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy  Dolphin)

(Summer track, Porongurup. 30x20cm oil on board. © Andy  Dolphin)

Latest

Things have been a bit hectic lately but I finally managed to get some painting done.

(Inn Kitchen, Arthur River. 70x37cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

This piece was based on a small plein air painting I did in March last year and "fixed up" a couple of weeks ago.

(Karri Light. 50x37cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

These will be on their way to exhibitions in the coming months.

Revision

Sometimes, despite best efforts, some paintings just don't work. With plein air paintings, the chances of "failure" are much higher as paintings are executed quickly in changing light conditions.

I have quite a collection of paintings that I don't let out in public. Every once in a while, I review them and see if I can recover the feeling that made me want to paint them in the first place.

Here are two such paintings, although you only get to see "the after shots".

(Wansborough Karri. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

This small painting was done in the studio but executed quickly, like a plein air painting. It is based on a piece I did a few years ago. The original lacked a significant warm-cool contrast and therefore failed to portray much depth or the warmth of the sunlight. This little painting was done with a view to doing a larger piece.

(Kitchen, Arthur River. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

This was a little plein air painting I did back in March of the historic Mount Pleasant Inn kitchen at Arthur River.

When I first painted it, the sun disappeared for quite a while and I lost the light that had initially attracted me. As a result, all my tones drifted toward the centre and the painting lacked punch.

Last week I took another look at it and increased the contrast on the building, darkening the shadow side and boosting some of the intense light on the red brick wall. This instantly lifted it so I continued on, making the front row of trees darker to bring them forward from the distant trees. A bit of warm colour was added to the dry foreground grasses and it was saved.

In this case, I painted right over the original because the foundations were okay. It's a risk, because it could all go wrong then you've lost the lot, but it is a huge time saver. This one too might be used as the basis for a larger painting. There are a few exhibitions coming up and I need some paintings bigger than 20x24cm.

Plein air summer

I was invited to this year's first Porongurup art picnic yesterday and decided, this time, I'd do a painting rather than sketches.

We met at the old Woogenellup bridge and I wandered around for half an hour or more looking for something to catch my eye. It's a very interesting place with the abandoned timber bridge sitting alongside a concrete river crossing and culvert. The bridge itself is slowly returning to nature as the timbers rot and grasses and saplings take hold. Much of the area immediately surrounding the bridge is overgrown with grass and scrub.

I chose a spot at one end of the bridge where the post-and-rail fencing ends atop a grassy ridge. The evening sun was shining through at a sharp angle offering interesting contrasts of warm and cool tones.

The colour of the light changed dramatically during the forty minutes or so of painting time and I battled to decide which colours to follow and which to ignore. I ened up with this...

Original, on-site painting

I didn't mind it as an on-site exercise but it lacked punch, largely due to my colours drifting too much toward greys. There was no sunlight shining on the fence or grass by the time I was finishing.

I reviewed the painting this morning and decide to see if I could lift it. Step one was to scrape it back with a palette knife...

On-site painting scraped back ready for retouching

Scraping back an oil painting leaves a clear image in thin, smooth paint.

I reworked almost every part of the under-painting as I wanted to soften the background tones, pushing them back in the process, and strengthen the foreground. Here's where I ended up...

(Post-n-rail. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

It's still a fairly loose study but the finished painting has much-improved tonal contrast, helping the fence stand forward from the distant trees. There is also a more distinct warm-cool contrast between foreground and background.

I also added in a post on the far side of the track. I'd noticed this as I was finishing the original but I was too busy to add it in. It's barely noticeable but adds some dimension to the timber structure.

This was an unusual subject for me as I most-often seek out wide vistas, but I enjoyed the challenge.

Summer daze!

Summer finally hit the Lower Great Southern this week. On Monday the thermometer settled somewhere around 35º C by midday and the wind was full of attitude. So naturally I decided this would be a good time to go outside and paint.

I plastered myself with sunscreen, donned my hat and headed about 1km down the road from home to a spot I'd noticed the day before. Something about this scene, a place I've driven by almost every day for over seven years, caught my eye.

I set up my easel in the ditch on the side of the road and if the gusty wind and searing sun weren't enough of a challenge, I soon discovered that I'd left my palette knife and one of my brushes at home.

I use a palette knife for scraping excess paint from the brush during painting so not having it with me meant wasting more paint and time than usual as I struggled to keep my one main brush clean. Still, I persisted and here's the result after about half an hour, during which my easel almost collapsed after a particularly strong gust of wind...

(Hot & windy. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

Later on, I headed back to the Porongurups to have another go at a spot I painted the day before. I had much more time to work on this one and as a result, I've added a little more detail than usually appears in my plein air works. The downside is that the light changes considerably over an hour so it's possible to end up with two or more paintings in one as the light on the foreground doesn't necessarily match the light on the background which is usually finished first.

In this case, the shift in light wasn't too dramatic and I used the extra time to capture some of the detail in the mountain range. I wouldn't usually do this with distant objects but I couldn't pass up the opportunity while the range was lit and not shadowed by clouds.

(Summer track, Porongurup. 30x20cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

The real thing...

Following on from yesterday morning's imaginary digital landscape painting, I present you with "the real thing".

I headed out yesterday evening and after driving around for and hour or more, I headed to a spot that catches my eye every time I drive past it. Yesterday it reminded me of my morning's efforts so I decided to capture it in oils.

(Porongurup track. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

I was rushed due to fast-changing light (the sun had as good as set by the time I stopped) and clouds rolling in but I caught some of the feeling. I might head back there again today, a bit earlier this time, and see if I can do better.

Clear evening sky

Christmas eve was warm and incredibly humid around here. In nearby Albany, the moisture hung like a veil of smoke over the city through to the early afternoon. I've never seen anything quite like it before.

Since the evening sky was looking clear, I headed back to the scene I painted a few days ago when it was overcast.

(After Harvest 2. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

Although I stood in virtually the same spot to do this second painting, I decided to zoom in a little more on the tree. Overall this painting is much warmer but there's still not much detail in the mountains due to the haze. On a clear day you can usually see trees and rocks up there!

As I was painting, I could see the colour changing. The blue was leaving the sky and the mountains as the haze became warmer and heavier. Even the feature tree started to lose its colour and contrast. When I was happy to call the first painting finished, I grabbed another board and captured a quick impression of the same scene before last light.

(After Harvest 3. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

This one was fast - about 15 minutes in total. It's turned out just a little bit grey as I didn't have time to clean my brushes or palette but the general feeling is there.

I might have to keep heading back to this spot in different weather conditions and different times of day.

Hope you had a great Christmas.

Humid!

The sun is still playing hide and seek with us but temperatures are on the rise. The last few days have felt like it was going to rain but it just isn't really happening. This, combined with the warmer days, means humidity! I love days like this - it feels like there's a thunder storm around the corner.

On the way home from my day job, I pulled into a rural driveway and did a quick painting of the sky before sunset.

The tones need a little adjusting but there's potential to turn this one into a larger painting.

After packing up, I encountered this sky a little closer to home...

Rest assured the photo doesn't do it justice. There were different clouds shapes and colours in every direction and the heat and humidity were still electrifying. Just my kind of evening.

PS. I just checked the weather forecast and the Bureau agree there could be thunderstorms.

Clouds!

I looked outside at 6am and the place was glowing, with strong sunlight streaming through the trees. So I got up, had breakfast and coffee and prepared to go painting. By 7am I was in the van but the sun was nowhere to be seen.

I decided to go out anyway in the hope the clouds would break up as the sun rose higher. I headed out to the Porongurups and the cloud cover got heavier until, eventually, it started to rain.

I pressed on regardless and the sun kept teasing me with hints that it might break though anytime soon.

I drove around Porongurup for a while before noticing a setting that looked like it had been designed by a landscape artist. The tree was the "perfect" shape (a lot of gum trees are a bit on the ugly side) and the backdrop, with a cloud draped over one of the Porongurup Range peaks, was magical. The long dry grass in front of the dark silhouette of the tree sealed the deal for me.

Everything was still basically shades of grey but the cool dark tones of the mountains and trees contrasted nicely with the warm straw stubble in the paddocks.

I decided I'd have to paint it - sunlight or no sunlight.

 (Almost finished)

The lack of harsh light meant that I was able to take a little more time painting as the colours barely changed the whole time I was there.

The muted colour also meant I could use a limited palette - Ultramarine, Crimson, Yellow Ochre and Australian Red Gold plus white. I could even have got away without the Oz-Red-Gold but I quite like using it in mixes.

I can't recall the last time I did a landscape without using any cadmium colours - this might be a first!

(After Harvest. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

I'm really pleased with this one and I think I might do a larger painting from it.

Latest paintings

Here's the Porongurup landscape painting I did a couple of days ago. I've popped it in a frame for you.

(Knights Road, Porongurup. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

Here's another one of the Porongurups that I did about four days earlier.

(Woodlands Road, Porongurup. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

The top painting was done using a chisel-edged synthetic brush while the bottom painting was done with bristle brushes. Click on them both to compare the different finishes.

Both paintings were done en plein air but I must confess to making a few adjustments to the bottom one in the studio ans the light was fading fast when I painted it.

Another sunny day - sort of...

There were fluffy clouds around all day today but it was warm and sunny for the most part, making it the second sunny day so far this summer.

I headed out to the Porongurups this evening and found a pleasant spot off the side of Knights Road, looking south toward the mountains. The cloud cover had increased and there were a lot of cloud shadows, especially on the distant hills, but the foreground was bathed in sunlight.

I set up and started painting, taking careful note of the major shadows cast by the foreground and mid-ground trees. This was to prove prophetic as the clouds soon rolled in and before long, nothing was in sunlight. I continued painting with an image firmly in my mind. It was quite pleasant as things don't change much when it's cloudy - but I needed to be careful to not go painting too much detail in the shadow side of my main tree (shadow areas become more detailed in the absence of bright, direct light).

Eventually the sun peeked through for a few minutes and I took this opportunity to put highlights on the main trees and some of the sunlit grass.

After I took the photo, I made a few more additions and adjustments, including reworking the clouds which looked too heavy and somewhat dull.

I stayed fairly true to the scene before me. The only "major" change I made was to turn the two foreground trees into just one as they were almost in line from where I stood to paint. I also made the mountains slightly taller so they didn't "kiss" the top of the that tree. Compositionally, it's best to have edges either overlapping or not touching at all rather than just touching.

I used just one square, synthetic brush on almost the entire painting. It's a brush I've owned for years but I think this is the first time I've used it - I usually use square or filbert bristle brushes. The synthetic brush is more pliable and cleans much more easily than the bristle brushes. I think I'll be using it again for my plein air work.

A sunny day at last!

The first 11 days of summer were, to say the least, somewhat heavily overcast around these parts. I ventured out once or twice to see if anything paintable grabbed my attention but I really am driven by sunlight and shadows so never got my brushes wet.

Finally, on day 12, the sun shone with a vengeance. With a huge blue sky and the temperature hitting the low thirties (Celsius), painting was back on the menu.

For weeks I've driven past a WA Christmas Tree on the side of Albany Highway and kept telling myself that when the sun came out, I was going to paint it. It was frustrating seeing it every day under grey skies. They're still spectacular with their near-fluorescent yellow-orange flowers but I wanted shadows. I took a few photos when the clouds were a little thinner but they were less than inspiring.

When the sun finally did make an appearance, I headed straight to this tree.

Albany Highway carries some large trucks and plenty of traffic, all doing 100kmh-plus, so I didn't really want to stand my easel on the edge of the road. Instead, I parked my van in a driveway across the road from the Christmas tree and set my easel up in the passenger seat. I painted for half an hour - and it was the most-uncomfortable half hour I've suffered for a while! But at least I got my painting.

(Nuytsia by Highway. 20x24cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

It's only a quick sketch really but I'm happy with what I've captured. My main interest was the contrast between the ultra-warm sunlit flowers and the cool-dark greens of the shadow side of the foliage mass.

I'd previously given this panel a red tone that you can see peeking through all over the painting. I used a limited palette of five colours to help speed things up a little.

A herd of cattle wandered into the scene when I was half-way through painting. They hung around for a long time and it took a lot of effort not to add them in.

The Christmas trees are putting on a good show this year and I hope to capture a few more in paint before the flowering season ends.

Plein air time again!

It's been a while since I managed to get out and do a plein air painting - I tried last week but it wasn't to be. I threw my gear in the van and set off about town, looking for something "easy" to do, to get myself back into the swing of things. It was a hot humid day with thunderstorms a distinct possibility. As it happened, the thunderstorms never came but the clouds did.

I found some interesting spots but without sunlight they just didn't grab me enough to justify getting my brushes dirty. So home I went.

Today, however, was warm and sunny - windy too but with clear skies as far as you could see. So off I went in search of something new. I think I found it, on a back road/track, just north of Narrikup.

This mostly-gravel road has a few interesting sandy sections that give the landscape a very different feeling, somewhat like "warm snow". The shadows have a purply-grey coolness about them with stark warm highlights in areas where the sun breaks through. I enjoy painting sandy tracks more than gravel ones. They "feel" more natural somehow.

This section of track featured a WA Christmas Tree (Nuytsia floribunda) which stood out like a beacon against the other trees and scrub. It begged me to paint it.

It's early in the flowering season yet for Nuytsias, but this one was a little ahead of most in the region. I'll have to remember to take another look in a couple of weeks as there are still a lot of unopened flowers on it.

 (No, I didn't stand in the middle of the road while painting.)

I had to work fast on this one as I could see the light was going to change dramatically. Not only did the track fall almost entirely into shadow, as you can see above, but the sunlight warmed considerably, giving the green-grey shrubbery a warm orange glow.

Plein air painting... you don't have to be mad, but it helps.

Nuytsia floribunda: Oil painting

My most recent oil painting.

 (Nuytsia floribunda. 25x35cm oil on panel © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

This was based on a digital painting I did a few weeks ago.

Twilight in the Bay: Oil

Here's one I did a couple of weeks ago.

 (Twilight in the Bay. 70x37cm oil on panel © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

You can get a little background on this painting in the following articles:

Perfect plein air afternoon
Preliminary sketch

Herefords: Oil painting

Along with all the digital fun I've been having, I have been doing a little oil painting lately.

Here's the step-by-step process of my latest painting based on a digital painting I did a couple of weeks ago...

 (Herefords- digital painting. 700x500px . © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

This is the digital painting that served as a starting point. Since the computer is nowhere near my painting room, I used an earlier oil painting as a reference whilst painting and only occasionally looked back at the digital picture to see if I was heading in the right direction.

A quick layout of the major shapes and undertones (shadow tones). The paint was thinned a little with turps and whisked on with a pastry brush.

Starting with the sky and working down the painting and from background to foreground, I begin working over the painting with thicker paint. I'm still focussing mainly on shadow tones though I've added a subtle highlight to the distant hills.

After all the major shadow tones have been reworked, I apply heavier layers of local colours.

 (Herefords. 25x35cm oil on panel © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

Once I had the bulk of the painting "feeling" about right, I scraped out the areas where the cattle had to go using a small, dry filbert brush. Then the beasts were added using the same process - undertone, midtone, highlight. Once they were in place, I worked back over other areas, softening some detail and adjusting colours until I declared it finished.

In many ways the finished painting is quite conceptual compared to the near-literal interpretations of scenes that I usually paint. The primary focus throughout was to keep the majority of colours controlled in such a way that the "red" herefords almost glow in the evening sunlight.

Note: The photography on some of these is a bit sad. Sorry.