Painting sand

Before I get to the subject of this entry I'd like to (once again) draw your attention to the new blog I launched two weeks back: 'An oil painting a week'. If you get the chance, please take a look and let me know what you think. End of commercial.

Dunes in the Sunlight, oil on paper, 30 x 40 cm

This last week I've been working on an oil sketch on paper: a dune in the sun with a blue sky and some summer clouds. I wanted to emphasize the grainy texture of the sand, so I decided to conduct a little experiment. Why not apply the texture beforehand and paint on top of that? I still had a can of modelling paste and I applied it with a palette knife. Got out my stippler and worked the paste till I got a very fine texture that looked like this:

Then I mixed a bit of fleshcolour (Lukas) with Yellow Ochre (Talens) and Bohemian Green (Lukas) and soon found out I needed a lot more paint. A surface like this absorbs paint very quickly. Took me a few layers to get it right.

Painting foliage has never been my strongpoint. This time I started with an underpainting of Burnt Sienna (Talens) and Yellow Ochre (Lukas). Once dry I painted the sand reed on top of it with my beloved saber/squirrel brush (see blog entry Friday, January 17th, 2014).

Drew some more reed in the wet surface with the stem of my brush, exposing the brown underpainting. It was a struggle, like always...

For a bigger picture of the painting please see my online sales page.