Painting Process

How I sometime tackle a painting, some beginning steps.

First you must go on some kind of outing or adventure and snap a ton of pictures.  This was a super day we spent cross country skiing near Fernie, BC

Decide on a picture and do some ROUGH sketches to help determine what is relevant to paint

I like a vivid acrylic underpainting that will show here and there with some pops of colour later

 and warm up the painting a bit - especially in these snow scenes

I use some black gesso to establish some of the darkest dark areas - it will mostly get painted over.  You can't really see it but I did a transparent red earth glaze of oil paint over the large tree area to add warmth to the trees later too.  I begin laying in the sky first, then randomly start working all over.

This is as far as I got this week.  I will let the painting dry before I tackle the closer trees, as they have that red glaze I don't want mixing in and making muddy later.  

Now I hope that it will continue to work out and sometimes I lose courage and don't want to go farther cause I haven't done anything I do not like yet.  I always fear it could go south on me, but if I plan properly, mix my paints out first and not rush it, it tends to work okay!  I WILL post the results when it is finished. Fingers crossed.