I was happy with the sky in the previous image, but then realised that in the John Piper skies there's more swirling movement and so I decided that I needed to add more movement to my painting, as my previous stage had more of a cross hatching type texture to it. The sky still needs a bit of work doing to it but I'm happy with how the lighter area in the middle of the sky creates the light source for the building. There's much use of this kind of dramatic skyline in the backgrounds that Piper painted for theatrical productions.
I've started to mix darker colours into the building whilst the paint is still wet as I decided not to leave it all until the paint had dried just in case it looked too rough.
To help my assessment of the composition I've added the main elements such as the gravestones and the dry stone wall and also the windows so that I could judge if I'd got the proportions right. It's frustrating trying to add darker detail to the window when the lighter paint just mixes in and prevents the dark from sticking, so there are some issues that will have to be resolved when the oils have dried.
I've noticed how fond Piper is of black within his paintings and I'm hoping that it's not pure black from a tube as I've been warned against that so many times! So to incorporate darker colours into my painting (which I've already started to in the trees in the side) I've been mixing viridian green with prussian blue and a tiny bit of payne's grey and sometimes some burnt sienna to warm it up a bit. I'm hoping that this will provide the added layer of depth that's in Piper's paintings without killing the colour and sucking all light out of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment