This is one is about the painting process of "Big to Small".... i.e: Starting with big block shapes to begin with, and then refining these to smaller details as you carry on the painting.
This process is followed by many artists and works especially well for loose impressionist style paintings.
"Big to Small" is not a total "God" rule of painting, as some artist will work the other way ..."Small to Big". However, that approach is rather rare and you need a lot of experience as artist to do it. "Small to Big" can be risky in the sense that your painting will end up lacking good drawing structure of the basic underlying shapes if not done correctly.
The reference for this painting was this picture I took several summers' back of the River Thames just outside of Oxford in the surrounding city meadows....
As you will see I followed it to point but changed some shapes and colours subtly as doing straight copies can be boring, and I was also doing it rather quick and rushed too.
Here is the step by step screen grabs....
This was all done on one layer with two brushes... a rough edge brush for the big shapes, and then a rectangular chalk style brush to cut in and do the smaller details.
Stage - (A) Put in the very large block colours and shapes with the big rough edge brush first.
Stage - (B) Carry on doing that but also switching to the small brush for some line work.
Stage - (C) Using the Chalk brush completely now to refine things.
Stage - (D) More of the same, using the brush strokes to follow lines of the forms.
Stage - (E) Noticed the top of the sky was too pale so darkened that up, also put some shadows and little details such as the rope in.
I could have carried on refining this picture but didn't think there was much point as it showed all I wanted out of it really, and like I said I was doing it rather rushed and quickly too.
Hope this helps people, and this will be first of many tutorials in the coming weeks.
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