Before the Storm, the video

It's been a while since my last tutorial (3 years to be exact), so I'm very pleased to announce I finally finished the third one. The subject this time is painting storm clouds. As usual the video follows the painting process, from it's planning stages to the finished work. I'm adding the dry brush to the list of painting techniques. It's a very helpful tool for painting life like clouds. 

I just posted a 6 min. trailer on YouTube and on my website. If you decide to purchase the video, please go to http://paintingskies.com/video/.  

Before the Storm, oil on panel, 70 x 120 cm

Just like before the camera work was done by Theo van Egeraat and again it's simply great. This is the third video we did together and our corporation felt very familiar. I was not at all bothered by the camera while painting.

The music for the video has been specially composed by Udo Pannekeet, bass player, composer and conservatory teacher. His amazing soundscapes add a wonderful feeling to the video.

My friend and fellow painter David L. Smith (great seascapes!) generously offered to edit the English voice over and since I'm not a native speaker his contribution was crucial for keeping the voice over understandable.

Let me know what you think!

Waves

Wave Breaking on a Peer, oil on panel, 33.5 x 59"

I'm in the middle of a wave-painting frenzy. Finished two wave paintings in the last month and I'm working on a third. Really enjoying myself. To me, a successful wave painting is about energy and freedom. Working on one always raises my mood. It's pure painting fun with all it's different surfaces: smooth, soft green patches where the wave is rolling over and explosions of white foam when it breaks. All these surfaces need a different approach: I glaze the smooth parts and for the foam I use pure paint, no medium at all. 

Wave Breaking on a Peer, detail

Highlight of the fun is painting the foam dots that are thrown in every direction. I use a worn out fan brush to splatter the thin paint on the panel. Back in Kindergarden we did it with a tooth brush, but a fan brush gives you some control over the splatters.

Stormy Breakers, detail

Stormy Breakers, oil on panel, 15.7 x 63"

For larger pics (with more details) please go to my website: www.paintingskies.com., or click the link on the title of the paintings.

Later!

Romantic

Caspar David Friedrich
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

I'm a Romantic. Not that I treat my wife to a candle lit dinner every week (she'd probably think I went mad), but I can relate to the ideas about nature of the Romantic era. It lasted from (give or take) 1800 to 1850. A true Romantic sees nature as a source of very intense and sometimes even religious experiences. The genre to best express that feeling is of course landscape. One of the most important Romantic landscape artists is the German Caspar David Friedrich. In some of his paintings he places a lonely pedestrian facing the overpowering presence of nature. In his 'Wanderer' this figure is still quite dominant, but in other paintings (of different of artists as well) it shrinks to a tiny dot in the vast landscape.

My hometown museum hosts an exhibition entitled 'Romanticism in the North'. In this case 'the North' means the north of Europe. Went to see it last week and came home with mixed feelings. On the one hand I saw some totally over the top paintings (some of them even poorly painted), on the other hand I was stunned by a few large size renderings of nature & drama, like the one I'm looking at in the picture. It's a shipwreck drama bij Wijnand Nuijen, a Dutch painter who was 23 when he painted it. He hardly outlived his masterpiece. Died at 26...

In the catalogue of the exhibition the figure-in-a-landscape theme is seen as symbolic for the deep longing to become one with nature and at the same time for the impossibility of fulfillment. Even though I'm a Romantic this yearning is strange to me. It's like wanting to be something you already are. We don't have to become one with nature, we are nature.

I just finished a painting that I think is definitely Romantic. It's called 'Before the Storm'. Not a human being in sight...
It will be the subject of my next tutorial. We're in the process of editing the vast amount of footage and that'll take a while. Hope to release it this coming May. I'll keep you posted.

Before the Storm, oil on panel, 27.6 x 47.2"

Dry brush

Those of you who have seen my full length tutorials know that I often start with a midtone when I'm painting clouds. It can either become the shadow part or the bottom layer for the highlights. Then I slowly build up the highlights until I get them just right. With 'Tidal Pool' I took a different approach.

 

Tidal Pool, oil on panel, 35.4 x 47.2"

  

I started by painting the blue of the sky covering the entire surface. Waited a day til it was dry. Painted the midtone, a soft purple-like grey. Waited another day. So far so good.

Normally I would've painted a rather thin layer of Titanium White and a hint of Vermillion Red on top of this layer and repeated that in the next few days, up to the right shade of white.




This time I thought I'd try something else. The color mix was the same: Titanium White and a hint of Vermillion Red. The difference: no medium, just pure paint. With a number 30 spalter I bristled the dry paint on top of the bottom layer.The combination of the rough brush and the dry paint worked very well to create a cloud like surface.

I shot the below picture close to the painted surface. Especially on the edges of the highlights it clearly shows the hair-like structure that you get when using this dry brush technique. I left a small zone of the underpainting purple uncovered, to prevent the hard edges that will immediately turn your cloud into an isolated lump. Now it nicely dissolves into the blue sky.

Framing #2

As some of you may know I paint on 6 mil. MDF board. I order them at Mus-paneel, a small Dutch company, specialized in preparing painting boards. They do an exellent job. Got some secret recipe to make the surface as smooth as ice. After doing their magic they ship the boards to my framer to have them cradled.

The cradle is glued to the back of the board 

Cradling is essential, especially for the larger boards. It provides stability and prevents curvature. But there is another reason. I use floaters as a standard frame and the cradle makes it possible for the painting to be screwed to the frame. (By the way, I love that word, floater. It describes exactly what happens: like your painting is floating in its frame. The Dutch term is less poetic: 'baklijst'. 'Bak' means bin, 'lijst' means frame. As if you dump your painting in a bin...)

The width of the border from the cradle to the edge depends on the specifics of the floater you use. The one I've been using the last couple of years allows a 30 mil. width between the cradle and the edge of the board. If you glue the cradle to far from the edge, it will have no frame to sit on. I probably lost you by now, didn't I? Maybe the above cross section will shed some light. 

The Sea, oil on panel, 47.2 x 63"

Anyway, I thought I'd end this rather dull story with a painting. In a frame.

Painting Snow

A White Christmas is very rare in Holland. I don't even remember the last time, but the web doesn't forget, so I looked it up: the last time we had one was in 2010 and the one before that was way back in the twentieth century. We do have snow though, at least a few times every winter. Very inspiring for a landscape painter.

There's a common misunderstanding about snow. I hate to break the news to you, but it's not white. It has a lot of different colors, ranging from yellowish to light shades of purple, depending on the circumstances, but not white.

Snowy Polder, oil on panel, 7.1 x 11.8"

For example: in a snow landscape it gets very clear that shadows have a distinct color. Not just some darker muddy shade, but an actual color. In the above landscape the shadows have a soft purple haze, that contrasts with the warmer sunlit parts. Painting a snow landscape is an excellent opportunity to practice your colored greys. If you want to find out more about mixing colored greys, you could watch the YouTube clip I did on the subject.

Snowy Dune, oil on panel, 27.6 x 39.4"

Snow landscapes often hinge on the contrast between warm and cold colors. A few warm accents in a predominantly cold painting often make a big difference. In the Snowy Dune painting the bottom part of the sky and the dune grass (detail below) do the trick. If you want to be sure of the warm-cold contrast you could try painting your snow landscape on a mars red ground. You'll be surprised!

Snowy Dune, detail

A quick guide to painting oil sketches on paper

It's been quite a while since I last posted a clip on YouTube, it was January 2017 I believe. It's not that I don't enjoy making them, but painting comes first and I've been pretty busy this past year. Anyway, I did another one and you can watch it on YouTube. It's 'A Quick Guide to making Oil Sketches on Paper' of just over 6 minutes. Hope you enjoy it!