**Authentically Human! Not Written by AI**
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| Kilt Rock, 36x12 Oil Read on for details! Also, it's available. |
This winter, I'm working on some large paintings of Scotland. (These are for my upcoming book, which will be part of my Through a Painter's Brush series.) "Kilt Rock" was a fun one to paint, as I wanted to turn a broad, 1:3 format on its head to enhance the somewhat unsettling feeling of the sheer, 180-foot plummet of Mealt Falls, a sea cliff waterfall on the Isle of Skye. Kilt Rock is the name of the cliff behind the falls.
Here are some progress shots with some explanatory text. Click on images for bigger versions.
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| I first made a 1/2-scale design sketch in vine charcoal on newsprint. You'll note this image is sideways—but that's how I sketched it! Working with this 90-degree shift helped me see the simple shapes in the abstraction, rather than thinking of shapes as "cliff," "waterfall," and so on. |
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| When I took my reference photos, the day was overcast with a cool light. I wanted to keep that cool-light effect, so I started off by toning my 36x12 cradled panel with quinacridone magenta. I also outlined my shapes and blocked in the rocky cliffs with the same. |
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| Moving to viridian and phthalo emerald, I blocked in the grassy areas. At this point, the magenta was looking rather lurid, so I toned it down by scumbling on some viridian. Taking a clean brush dampened with Gamsol, I removed paint where I wanted to reshape the waterfall. I also lightened some of the values elsewhere by scrubbing down these areas with a paper towel. (No, I don't use Viva—just whatever's cheap and comes in a "select-a-size" version.) |
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| Now I was ready to tone down the color, so I pulled out my set of Portland Greys. Every mixture from this point on had some grey added to it. Again, I kept "cool light" in mind as I mixed and painted. By the way, you'll note that, on the horizon, a wedge of land has sneaked in. This wasn't in my original design. It has become an unfortunate habit, no doubt picked up while painting countless seascapes with boring, empty horizon lines, that I seem to want something there. In the final version, I removed it, and I think the painting is the better for it. See the image at the top of the post for the finished version. |
Here are the colors I used in this painting: titanitum-zinc white, cadmium yellow light, naphthol scarlet, alizarin crimson, quinacridone magenta, cerulean blue hue, viridian, phthalo emerald, Portland grey (all three values.) All colors and mediums are by Gamblin; I used Galkyd Gel at every step so each layer would be dry by the next day. Brushes used are Rosemary sable flats, except for the initial block-in, when I used cheap synthetic flats to scrub in the color.
