ASSIGNMENT 3 : LANDSCAPE PAINTING FROM MIXED SOURCES

ASSIGNMENT 3 : LANDSCAPE PAINTING FROM MIXED SOURCES

Before I started the work for this project I spent a while looking at the album of Autobiography of Andrew Wyeth and the thing that most interested me was his work of watercolour and dry brush showing scenes of old buildings, barns, dry stone walls and old broken trees. He is an artist of great class, his compositions are perfect and the way in which he combines colours is extraordinary, the work is perfectly drawn and even though the colour is not always realistic the tonal relationship is one hundred percent accurate. I did not want to copy his work as I am not able to do so as it is beyond my level but I noticed some similarities between what he painted and the farm I live on, especially when I look at old barns, cowsheds and dry stone walls. Of course in England everything is surrounded by greenery so it looks different but I took some pictures where there was minimalistic greenery and concentrated on the buildings.

I first did a quick colour study on A3 format and then started to paint the final piece on Grain Fin 425g/m^2 76x56cm paper. After I finished the first study I decided to use lighter colours for the final piece as the photo shows lighter colours than what I showed in the first study. I had a couple of problems with choosing a colour for the sky so I did the sky in an experimental way which I first tried on a small piece of paper. I started by drawing the composition with HB pencil from the right and noticed the building on the left would not fit so I decided to make it shorter to fit the composition better. I was not able to create the green colour I saw on the photograph and I made a mistake and some of the green became opaque. On the picture there are dark patches on the road which is because it is wet, I wanted to show this in the painting and did so by adding blue to the road. It may not look like the picture but I know that the road was wet and wanted to try to show it. I tried to paint using clean colours and not mixing them too much, not many layers were added during the painting because I know I have a tendency to then create dirty colours and I tried to avoid this mistake. I have done my best but I think the whole work looks like I used too many patches of colour to create the work and not every colour, especially green, is in the right relationship with one another.

Colour study on A3

Final piece ” Farm Yard ” 76x56cm