More paintings

This is another painting from the Looking at Landscape course I am doing. We are now onto texture as well as tone so the paint is put on fairly thickly. This picture of the corner of my back garden was begun by painting the whole canvas red so that this shows through and gives some dynamic to the bright colours.
This painting was done for an assignment and is in response to an historic event or news item. A few weeks ago it was both - celebrating the 1969 moon landing. The collage was made from a newspaper supplement of the old newspapers from 40 years ago.

Learning to Paint Landscapes with Acrylics

This semester I have joined Wednesday morning classes with Michael Winters, a well known Canberra artist and printmaker. We have been working on tonal studies with a limited palette and trying to blend the edges of shapes and lines in a similar way to the early Australian painters from the Tonalist Movement 1915-1950. Two significant painters were Max Meldrum and Clarice Beckett. A recent exhibition I saw is called "Misty Moderns". At first only burnt umber and white could be used, then Ultramarine Blue was added to the palette. Photos used for paintings were reduced to black and white to emphasise the tones since colour is so dominant to the eye.


My front garden path and the statue by my pond featured in many of these paintings.



Yellow was then added to the palette extending the range of colours as well as tones.


Finally Cadmium Red was added to the palette. Black was never used as it flattens colours.

This was an experimental picture using a highly textured background.
Click on the picture to see more details of the method.