Exercise Painting a landscape outside

Completed painting

View from the church at Curdworth

Oil on board A4

 

 

I remember watching a programme about David Hockney’s ‘a bigger picture’landscape exhibition which showcased his recent paintings of Yorkshire and how he had made a point of first sketching all the plants, trees and little shrubs growing in the English countryside so his painting were factually accurate. While sketching possible scenes for this exercise it became apparent that I had driven past theses field hundreds of times but not looked closely at the nature that was growing – the sycamore, oak, beech and ash trees, and how much the fields changed, from week to week with farmers growing oilseed rape, and the barley and potatoes, and the cutting of crops and turning soil in between.

Also PYLONS. Pylons and telegraph poles are everywhere.

For this exercise I sketched various  views of the countryside surrounding Sutton Coldfield before settling on the final view.

 

 

 

 

INITIAL SKETCH

 

 

 

I had prepared an orange ground already, anticipating the opposite blues and greens of the scene I had planned on painting.

 

 

 

COMPLETED PAINTING

I seem to have distorted the final painting a little. Whilst painting outside, my minds eye seems to have made the view more undulating than perhaps it was. Although I thought the painting was fairly accurate while sitting in the field, it seems to be too painterly and perhaps I should have chosen a more dramatic view.