Digital landscape animated

I thought I'd have a go at animating the step-by-step digital painting process from my last post.

Here you go. Click to see it larger.

How to: Digital Landscape

Here's a  step-by-step breakdown of how I approach a digital landscape painting like the one I did this morning.

For this painting, I used a cartoony cross-hatch brush from Chris Wahl.

For this brush to work to full advantage, you need a pressure-sensitive stylus and Photoshop (other software might also do do this). The default settings for the brush work beautifully as the cross-hatch pattern randomly rotates as you paint. All I change is the brush size and sometimes I turn Other Dynamics - Opacity on or off. I do most of the painting with the Opacity setting on so that a light touch produces a translucent wash. This makes it easier to build blends and allows for a little variety within major tones.

Step 1: Rough outline to locate main shapes. Since this painting was right out of my head, with no visual reference whatsoever, some things will change as I progress.

Step 2: Rough in undertones. Lighter and cooler in the distance, darker and warmer in the foreground. I adjusted the mountain shape so it would fully contain the main tree. I use a fairly large brush here to get the surface covered.

Step 3: Add weight to all tonal areas. I use some of the sky colour in the mountain colour. I do this by painting a transparent patch of the sky blue over the purple from Step 2. Then I select this colour with the eye dropper and apply it across the area. This helps to "absorb" the mountains into the atmosphere, especially the more-distant peaks.

I introduce highlights in the background and mid-tones in the foreground. I re-establish the main tree and distant trees and some minor detail is added to indicate a fence and track. I've also introduced a foreground shadow being cast from a tree off to the left somewhere. This small detail instantly adds depth - plus I like shadows falling across white sand tracks!

Step 4: Highlights are added to the foreground and middle distance. I've strengthened the track and foreground fence posts. By this stage, I'm adjusting the brush size up and down as I work on different areas.

Step 5: I decided to change the shape of the main tree as the earlier shape looked a little "weak". I've also marginally brightened the sky and added my digital signature.

(Imaginary landscape 2. 1500x1000px digital. © Andy Dolphin)

Step 6: Finally, I flattened the whole image, boosted the saturation a little and tweaked some minor details here and there across the whole painting. I could have adjusted the saturation with an adjustment layer instead of flattening - but I didn't.

There is a about 30-40 minutes work in this. Note that at 1500 pixels wide, this image would only produce a high quality (300dpi) print about 12cm wide! If I wanted to do anything serious with it, I could work at this size up to around Step 4 then increase the resolution before continuing with detailing.

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.

Up-sized canola painting

I posted a step-by-step mini demonstration of  this small studio study back in early March.

(Sunlit Canola. 20x24cm oil on panel. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

This week I decided it was time to do a bigger - and wider format - version of it.

Working on a 70 x 37cm double-primed MDF panel, I laid out the basic composition with a thinned out mix of ultramarine and crimson. Even at this very early stage there's a sense of distance and sunlight.

Next comes the washing-in of undertones with thinned colour and a one-inch pastry brush. After all tones are washed in I soften them with a gentle swish of the cleaned pastry brush.

At this stage things should hold together well through squinted eyes. If nothing is wrong compositionally and if all tones sit well with each other, preserving a sense of distance, I begin laying down final colours. I work from the sky down, moving "forward" through the landscape increasing colour saturation and contrast as I go.

In this case I felt the highlighted strip was too low as it ran almost centrally through the image space. Click on the image and squint at it to see what I mean. So I adjusted all the undertones upwards a couple of centimetres (about an inch) before moving on to the final painting process.

(Canola shadows. 70x37cm oil on panel. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

Here's the finished piece. I deviated a little from the smaller study. The biggest difference, other than the wider format, is that I kept the sunlit strip of canola a cooler yellow. It's pure cadmium yellow light over a neutralised green. I'm happier with this because it's how I perceive it when I'm driving around in spring. The shadowed canola is also a less saturated green to increase the impression of it being in the shadow of a cloud rather than a different crop.

The major theme of complementary blue and yellow is still there. The distant blues help to make the sunlit yellow appear even brighter than it would be without it.

It's at this point that my wife takes a look and offers an opinion. She likes this one - except that she thinks the foreground needs a little more detail. Now it's at this point that I disagree with her and tell her it'll be fine. Then, two days later I look at the painting again - and decide that it needs a little more detail in the foreground. Sigh.

My wife's happier with it now so I'll post the finished, finished painting in a day or two when it's dry enough to photograph again.

On the road again...

I had to drive to Williams again today to pick up two paintings. It's 200km one way.

Luckily, the weather was beautiful; another clear autumn day. I arrived there around 1pm, did what I had to do, ate a bit of lunch, drank coffee, did a quick sketch in the car park at the roadhouse then headed toward home.

Before I even left the Williams townsite, I decided to take a detour and just out of town, two minutes down the road in fact, I found an old, abandoned cottage surrounded by overgrown trees and backed by a timbered hill.

At least, I'm pretty sure it's abandoned.

I did a quick pencil sketch while I decided if I should stay and paint it. It was already 3pm and I still had a two hour drive home and kangaroos tend to cross the road as the sun sets.

Once the sketch was done I'd convinced myself it was worth setting up the easel. There was an inviting shady spot and it was a fairly quiet road so I had no excuse not to give this one a go.

Looking at the photo above, it looks like I've painted the blue sky in. I haven't. That blue on the canvas panel is just the natural light on the white gesso. That's how blue shadows are! The photo below was taken immediately after the one above - both are at the same stage, including that warm bit of tree on the far right that I ultimately decided to leave out. Even here there's a hit of blue in the sky but that's because I didn't colour correct it enough to completely remove the blue tint.

There was a definite warmth washing through the whole scene so I gave the canvas panel a quick wash with Australian Red Gold and Burnt Sienna. Then I went in with a simple wash of basic undertones using enough turps to keep the layer thin. It was warm so I expected this would dry as I continued painting. I feathered the underpainting with a clean pastry brush to knock off any thick raised edges and to blur it so it didn't start to "lecture" me on where things should go.

I bought my tube of Australian Red Gold (ARG) years ago - I can't even remember when but I suspect it was more than six years ago - and I've never once used it in a painting until today. Since I had it on the palette from the first wash, I decided to use it in my mixes.

ARG is a translucent yellow very much like rich, dark honey or treacle. In a pile it looks brown but spread thin it glows a vibrant golden yellow. I was amazed by the colours I got when mixed with my usual palette. Mixed with white it looks edible!

Here I've started to go in with final shadow tones. My main interest is keeping my dark and mid tones distinct and grouped. Even the silver roof of the cottage is a part of the shadow area. The red brick wall is a bit bright and saturated here. If you squint at the above pic (click for a bigger image) you'll see that the red jumps out too much from the dark trees either side of it. And it glows almost like it's in sunlight so it needs darkening and neutralising with a bit of ultramarine blue and ARG. I need to play warm darks against cool darks. This is one of the biggest challenges we face when painting en plein air (along with snakes, biting insects and clouds!).

The sky is mixed from ultramarine, white and ARG. The distant hills are mostly ultramarine and ARG with a little crimson thrown in the neutralise it (make it more grey, less saturated) then lightened with some of the sky mix. A little more white and ARG was added to suggest sunlit tree tops with the whole area kept soft to stop it coming forward.

From here on I was concentrating so much on painting that I forgot to take photos. Sorry. I can tell you that, quite unexpectedly, clouds rolled in and I lost my light. Bummer. Luckily I had a firm image in my mind from doing the sketch and there really weren't many sunlit areas anyway (it was really lucky that I had a mind-image because the photos I'd taken before I started are awful so I wouldn't have been able to use those to complete the painting).

The biggest problem now was that without the harsh sunlight, the shadow areas suddenly had detail. I could see all sorts of tones in the dark tree on the right, for example, that I couldn't see when the sun was out because the paddock was so bright. I was careful to ignore shadow detail as I soldiered on.

I left the foreground until last because the warm under-painting was a reasonable approximation of the final tone and colour. Then, just as I was painting it, the sun came out again - sort of...

Farmers like to burn their paddocks in autumn and it became apparent that someone was doing that nearby. The air was now filled with smoke and this gives sunlit areas an unnatural orange tint. The light was a useful guide for finishing the painting but I had to ignore the colours.

I'll post the finished painting tomorrow.

Still Autumn!

Sorry, I got distracted by snakes and lizards on my last article. This time I'll stick with painting, I promise.

This spot is between Mount Barker and Porongurup and is a dry creek bed for most of the year. Here it passes through a culvert under the gravel road.

I parked the van off the road - because there was room for a change - and set myself up in the creek bed. I was particularly interested in the dark shape formed by the shadow on the tree and cast on the grassy bank to the left. The culvert "tunnel" added interest.

It was around 1pm, warm and with virtually no cloud so I used a turpsy wash to place the first dark tones in the layout as I knew I wouldn't need to rush like I do with evening paintings. The sun was high and bright so the shadows and colours weren't going to change much for a while.

Major dark tone placed.

The sky is done and all major shadow tones are in place.

I've gone back into the dark tones of the tree, adding a little variety to the shadow areas refining the shape ready for the highlights. Some highlights have been placed in the distance and left foreground. I still need to do highlights on the tree, creek bed and grasses on the right. There was an interesting variety of greens and earth tones to deal with here. It's a constant process of comparing the relative temperatures of similar colours.

An hour has passed and it's virtually finished at this point (click pics for a bigger image). The two sunlit rocks near the tree's shadow in the painting are now in actually in the shade of the tree in the background. I'd taken careful note of them when I started as I knew there was a chance this would happen - and I wanted them sunlit. The concrete face of the culvert has done the same thing as the sun has crossed to road since I began. Again, I took note of this early on. I left the tree until last because I didn't expect its shading to change much - and it didn't, phew!

I added and adjusted some minor highlights before I packed up. I'll post the painting photo as soon as I can shoot it properly.

I left this spot and continued driving around as the weather was still terrific. I took a lot of photos of other places, many of which were in places where standing and painting would be dangerous. The roads around here a pretty quiet but the trucks are big and the speed limits high.

I did eventually find somewhere to stop and paint. I'll tell you about that and the spectacular sunset that followed next time.

Another quickie

Just another quick exercise from a photo.

A tonal wash sets things in place with a hint of warmth in the foreground.

I was so caught up in getting the tree to come to life forgot to take a photo until this point. Sorry. Just the foreground and some detailing to go.

(Behind the Dam. 20x24cm oil on panel. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

As small and seemingly insignificant as the sheep is, it has the brightest bright and it is in front of the darkest dark so it is unmissable.

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.

(Sunlit Canola. 20x24cm oil on panel. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

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.

Shed from start to finish

On the recent sketching picnic with the Porongurup Art Group I managed to snap a few photos of a farm shed during a short period when some evening sunlight broke through the heavy clouds. It's taken me a while to get around to turning the photos into a painting but finally, here it is - step-by-step.

More often than not I work from sketches from the computer screen. I load up the digital photo, make some minor adjustments so that it matches my memory of the light and colour of the day, crop roughly to the proportions I want for the finished painting and then do a small pencil sketch. I add colour notes to the sketch, often with reference to my trusty colour charts, and I use this sketch as my main reference for the painting process.

Working this way has some of the advantages of working on site since I am forced to simplify the image into a tonal sketch and then to simplify major colour areas, taking note of warm and cool passages. The time spent doing this helps to cement the image in my mind too so that some of what ends up in the painting comes from my own memory. Only when I'm nearing the end of the painting will I refer back to the colour photo to look for some final details, if I feel they'll add useful finishing touches.

A5 sketch from digital photo

I usually lay my composition out freehand with thin paint. In this case the shape of the shed was critical - if the perspective was off just a little, the painting would fail - so I gridded up a black and white print of the photo and transferred it to the board in pencil. This meant I could concentrate on getting the paint down, without worrying about whether a roof line was two degrees out.

Because this was to be a warm painting, I underpainted major areas with a burnt sienna wash. At this stage I wanted to break the surface into just a few major tonal areas. The washes were thin enough that I could just make out some of the pencil work for later.

I broke up the major tones with the addition of some darker passages by adding a little French ultramarine to the mix. The cloud mass was ultramarine with a little burnt sienna added to grey it off. I used a brush moistened with turps to remove some underpainting from the post-and-rail fence

The interior of the shed was very dark due to the strong sunlight on the outside walls. I've used French ultramarine, burnt sienna and permanent crimson to roughly block in the dark silhouette. I've strengthened the large trees behind the shed as the sunlit fence will need to contrast against these. A little burnt sienna has been dragged over the corrugated sheets on the shed front in order to give this area a little modelling and to break down the large light area.

Some minor details are hinted at with rough areas of tone. If you blur your eyes at this stage you should see if things are working out.

To take the painting toward completion, I begin in the sky. The clear sky area is mostly cerulean blue and white. A little ultramarine is added toward the top. The clouds are primarily ultramarine and crimson with some cerulean and yellow ochre worked liberally into them to reduce the flatness. Sunlight on the distant clouds is made with yellow ochre and cadmium yellow deep into white.

Next I work on the sunlit trees. Combinations of yellow ochre, cerulean blue, permanent crimson and cadmium yellow (deep and light) add variety to the masses. I still have to add colour to the trees seen though the shed. The bottoms of these trees are in the shed's shadow.

Shrubs in the distance are added with little fuss.

The distant paddock is added with a few simple brushtrokes and subtle colour shifts, no need for detail back here. I've used yellow ochre and cadmium yellow light over burnt sienna. Sunlit trunks are added to the trees and a few fence posts are loosely indicated in the distance.

I've also added colour to the shed walls. The bright area on the sunlit side is cadium yellow deep in white. The sunlit rust areas are cadium scarlet and burnt sienna while the shadowed rust is burnt sienna with a little ultramarine added. The front walls are more side-on to the sunlight so they aren't as bright overall. I subdued the sunlit wall colour with a little ultramarine.

The blue-purple shadow area under the roof on the near wall helps this area to come alive while the shadow of a tree on the sunlit wall stops this otherwise bright area from dominating and taking the eye out of the painting.

I've added some warm tones to the fence, combinations of cadmium yellow deep and cadmium scarlet into white, applied over a burnt sienna base. A few bright flashes of pure colour have been "thrown around". These will add minor visual interest later. I've also worked a little more on the interior of the shed, adding subtle shifts in tone to give a hint of the objects in there.

(Shed in Summer Light. 70x37cm oil on panel. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

The painting is finished with the foreground completed, some extra "sky holes" in the trees and final touches added to the shed walls.

My main interest in this work was the warmth of the summer-evening light on an otherwise overcast day. The dark shadow inside the shed invites the curious while the sunlit post-and-rail fence leads the way and helps balance the massive bulk of the shed that would otherwise weigh-down the left side of the painting. The paraphernalia lying around and leaning against walls and fences tells its own story.

(Shed in Summer Light, detail. © Andy Dolphin, 2010)