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A quick video tip especially for you guys, on using a coloured ground for your impressionism pieces.

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I’ve always loved being able to look through layers and flecks of colour to see the bones of a painting underneath, so was inspired to go back to an older, more impressionist style.

I wanted a simple image that was still spacious but one that didn’t really have a definitive focal point. I wanted to create the illusion of depth and distance, a bright sunny day and clear water, viewed through foliage specific to my area. And I wanted to “abstract” the marks without drawing attention to any particular area of the painting.

The long skinny format with the steps from the foreground into the background, combined with the perspective broken by miscellaneous branches and trees, create a wonderful opportunity for abstraction, a looser approach and to actually play with the dynamics of paint, creating a compelling image and an intriguing canvas surface.

I sketched the elements in with Dioxazine Purple. You can see a bit of this process in the Sealed Section video above too :)

Once that was done, I mixed the sand colour first, for no real reason. Once I finished that I mixed French Ultramarine Blue and a huge quantity of white to that previous sand colour and painted the lower part of the sky, blending upwards and adding more French Ultramarine Blue and some Pthalo Blue (I mixed the sand colour first because I wanted a hint of that in the lower part of the sky. Two birds, one stone).

When I painted the lower part of the sky I also painted the reflection on the wet sand. Some might say lazy, I say efficient. I then worked from the horizon down, originallly starting with predominantly French Ultramarine Blue, adding Pthalo Blue and eventually Cadmium Yellow Light to this water colour the further down the canvas I went.

I repeated that entire process, making modifications to the colours and shapes as I went, but I was still using a small brush to allow the discrepancies in colour and brushstroke to remain in the picture. This creates a broken yet kaleidoscopic effect, which is one of the wonderful aspects of impressionism. Unexpected flecks of colour spread throughout the picture.

I used a fan brash for this to avoid becoming too controlled, particularly in the grassy area in the foreground. I then began to paint more detail here and there with lighter flashes of foliage colour, whilst also placing flecks of pure colour here and there through the picture. Cadmium Orange is sensational for this.

Then using a liner brush, I worked over the painting establishing the finer branches, shadows under the rocks and stones on the sand, and creating the impression of sticks and errant leaves in both the grass in the foreground and the trees towards the top of the picture.

Lots of colour and contrast, and I think a lovely image."