French Countryside Loire Valley – Practice sessions continue on 2 fronts

More progress this weekend on the practice sessions for the Loire Valley countryside piece. Added the first pass at details to the sky on the oil on paper. I’ve done clouds in graphite before, but never detailed painting. Learned a lot about what not to do, most notably trying to be too precise and layered paint to thickly. Need to go with looser brush strokes and thinner paint, I think. Advice is welcome, so comment if you have some helpful guidance please.

The second pic below is a practice session on my iPad. Still getting the hang of the Paper 53 app tools, but it’s been very helpful in drafting possible compositional elements that I wouldn’t otherwise have taken the time to do with paint. It’s very limited when compared to real painting and drawing, but it’s an invaluable drafting tool for layout and testing ideas.

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Loire Valley Landscape

Started a new project today. I’ve sketched this one a few times already, but intend to use this as a reference point for the actual painting whereby I’m going to try to emphasize the storm clouds in the background, add some color to the foreground with flowers, and insert some actual people doing stuff in the village area to draw the viewer into the scene. This first effort will be a quick draft painting on paper to get the values and compositional elements figured out. If that goes well, I’ll parlay this into a larger piece.

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Reference Photo – Loire Valley, France
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Sketch on paper
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Initial block-in. Focus on values and basic color scheme.

Giverny update

Focused on the water again today. Also added some ripples to give the sense of movement. It’s not great, but good enough for now. Think it’s time to make some updates to the foliage and wrap this one up.

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Closeup of recent foliage updates.
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Close-up of water ripples.

Giverny – There’s no panic in painting!

Took another stab at Giverny. Added the remaining foliage in the lower left bank, added the wooden posts, and took yet another whack at the water.

This water is looking much better than past efforts. Did some research and practice sessions to work on the technique. Pretty sure this will be easier the next time I take on moving water because it will be from a clean slate, but correcting/updating this piece is tricky. Regardless, I stuck with my “don’t panic, there’s no panic in painting” mantra and pressed forward. I’m happy with the progress, but the water will have a couple more sessions of work. However, for the first time, I feel like the basic structure and feel is in place. Yeah, some of the greens are too saturated, and the gray sky reflection (the white-ish part in the center) isn’t working yet, but it’s a huge stride past where I’d been stuck before. Feel like I’ve pushed past a plateau and can build from this. That said, anyone with helpful advice is more than welcome to offer; as you can tell from past posts on this project, I could use the help.

Reference Photo
Reference Photo
Water attempt #5!
Water attempt #5!