Painting project

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ Work with a limited palette to create a harmonious painting

■ Practise techniques, including negative painting

■ How to use the Foliater brush to paint foliage

In last month’s issue I discussed aspects of this painting that needed study and forward planning. These included compositional considerations along with determining the colour scheme and practising techniques. Furthermore, the initial drawing needed some attention to perspective. If you want to follow this tutorial, you are advised to have last month’s issue handy.

The palette

I have only used three colours for painting this: lemon yellow, ultramarine and burnt umber. Lemon yellow and ultramarine combine to create the green shades, while ultramarine and burnt umber mix to make the darker shades in the foliage and the grey shades in the tree trunks, paving slabs on the path and shadows.

I squeezed out two generous amounts of lemon yellow, three areas of ultramarine and one of burnt umber. The first job was to create two separate wells of green. I added some water to one area of lemon yellow and stirred it around to loosen it. I then added a tiny amount of ultramarine and mixed this to create a light lemon green. I did the same with the other