Landscapes are not my favourite subject for painting. I think it is hard to do justice to the great outdoors. Nevertheless in preparation for a painting trip to Provence, I enrolled in a landscape course at the Ottawa School of Art with Instructor, Blair Paul. Blair taught us a straight forward approach for creating pretty impressive lanscapes without a lot of rework. The process starts with a background of burnt siena. First create a value drawing in ultramarine blue. Next start building layers of colour from dark to light until the essence of the landscape is captured. The piece de resistance is the sky. Using lots of white and yellow and touches of other colours, quickly work the sky, adding tree holes and reflections to finish off.
Here a some of the paintings I created during the course.
