Learn How to Paint with Chris Vidal

Painting with acrylics and oils

Today I am writing about a recent painting I finished of another Australian landscape.

I started this painting from the above reference photo, which I took while vacationing at snowy mountains very close to Thredbo, almost two years ago. This photo has very nice background mountains but the foreground is not that inspiring. However I decided to keep the basic shapes while modifying the colour scheme and adding gum trees to the foreground. Using charcoal I did a rough sketch of the main forms to define the background, middle and foreground. I added a farmhouse at the far end of the middle ground.

I started the painting by executing an underpainting with acrylic colours to establish the basic forms as well as the mood of the painting.

I decided to paint an early morning scene and so I chose a pallette of warm oranges and yellows and cool blues for the background. I then removing some trees and the road that was originally winding uphill in distance. The advantage of using an acrylic underpainting is that it dries very quickly although you can achieve the same result if you had to dilute oils with mineral spirit.

Next step was to go for a layer of oil colour to enforce the shadows and mid-tones in the painting. Colours used were titanium/zinc white, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, cerulean blue, yellow ochre, cad orange, burnt sienna, Australian red gold, virmillion, burnt umber, sap green, viridian,cad yellow light.

The final stage was to add the details and highlights, using both brushes and pallette knives. The final product can be seen above.