Landscape painting - Work in Progress

Cyprus landscape painting 15th January 2009

Cyprus landscape 15 January 2009

Oil on canvas
7 x 9.5 ins (18 x 24 cms)

A brighter day and the winter sun shining brightly on the sea took my attention. From my hill near the village of Pareklishia I looked across at the hill overlooking Amathounda (Ancient Amathus), with the Akrotiri peninsula in the background.

Cloudy landscape

Cyprus Landscape 14 Jan 2009
Oil on canvas
7 x 9.5 ins (18 x 24 cms)

A cloudy day and an appropriately subdued look to today's landscape.

WILD OLIVE TREE LANDSCAPE

There's a wild olive tree way in the distance silhouetted against the sea and sky, which often takes my eye when I'm out walking, so I decided to make it the inspiration for today's painting.

I'm still playing with oil pastels to sketch on canvas outdoors, and today I also took watercolour pencils in case I wanted to get down some detail first. I find the pastels great. They are easy to carry around, I can work quickly with them, just to get a feel for the subject, and make colour notes. A small Cola cool bag is just the right size for canvas, pastels and pencils. Dead easy!


Back at the studio I worked it up with tubed oils and brushes.

STUDIO VIEW

One of the studio windows looks down onto the village. I wanted to choose a tiny portion of the view for this painting, so needed to squint my eyes to pick out this bit of village house in the distance. On the up-side, a blurry look with imagined detail might look quite good, and the fact I only had to raise my head to see it, plus absence of snakes in the studio, is no bad thing.

This is stage one, which I've started with washy watercolour just to fix what goes where. Next I'll add more detail and colour with acrylic paint I think.

After the weekend I'll be out in them thar hills again, this time with snake-proof boots! I wonder if you can get Crocs wellies? Now that would be cool ;-)

UPDATE. The finished painting can now be seen on my other blog.

SUCH A WHIMP!

Had a bit of a false start on todays painting project. I took my oil pastels and a canvas for a walk again, striding out up the hill track with great purpose. Once off the track I climbed further up with my eyes glued for painterly subjects, of which there were many. Finding a suitable rock on which to perch was more problematic, as the abundant rocks weren't necessarily close enough to my chosen subjects, so on I went. The ground got rougher until I was mountaineering, and well into viper territory.

The truth is, dear blog-reader, I became decidedly twitchy, and every rustle in a bush caused more alarm. I'm not phobic about snakes particularly, but the thought of one cosying upto my bare feet and flipflops, while I'm deep in sketching mode, was not something I relished. So I took the whimps way out and decided to head for home .... but how to get there? I was too far from the track to get back easily, so decided to continue over the top of the mountain in roughly the direction of the house. Phew made it!

When H came home for lunch, I was nicely settled sketching Rock Daisies in our hill garden. My pathetic adventure remains a secret between y'all and me ;-) Tomorrow I shall wear wellies!

The finished painting, which I completed in the studio using tubed oil paints and brushes.

Fresh air painting

A beautiful warm sunny morning tempted me to work outdoors in the hills. I don't have a particular plein air painting kit, so decided to keep it simple and took just a canvas and some oil pastels. I chose a seat-sized rock and just set to work on what was at my feet (must remember to take a cushion next time). Got totally involved, so hardly noticed when the clouds came over until a spot of rain sent me back to the studio, where I finished off with tubed oil paint and brushes.