Across a River

My next effort in oils is an impressionist landscape of a view across a river. It is loosely based on a work by Alfred Sisley (Riverbank near Saint-Mammes, 1884), but is also inspired by my 1985 trip to Europe and the vineyards on the banks of the Rhine. It is on a very cheap Daler and Rowney 12" by 16" canvas panel, using mainly Charvin Fine Oils and a few Gamblin colors mixed in (all "student grade" paints). I'm using a variety of brushes, mainly cheaper brushes from Michael's and/or Jerry's Artarama. I am also using Chelsea Classical Studio's "Lean" and "Fat" mediums to thin my paint and make them flow better. Lean mediums are for first layers and fat mediums are for final layers.

As I have probably said before, I like many styles of painting and often find myself imitating whatever I have seen last. Which, I guess, I don't apologize for. Some of these efforts are better than others, some of them are more satisfying than others, and all of them probably get me closer to developing my own style of painting. It's a journey, not a destination.

Anyway, the plan for this painting was to sketch out the composition, and then paint it from top to bottom. Each stage would be a background layer of base color followed by a more detailed overlay.

The first picture below is a thin sketch in burnt sienna, followed by a Royal Blue layer in the sky. I then went over the base sky with various darkened and lightened brush strokes using French Blue and Titanium White. The distant hills were then roughed in with a variety of grays and blues (Payne's Gray, Volcano Gray, etc). At this early stage, the top two "bands" of the painting are basically done, while the lower half hasn't even been started.

Early - Sketch and Sky and Distant Mountains

The next picture (taken without an intermediate step or two), has the far bank of the river roughed in with pale earth tones, and then "detailed" with a variety of darker and lighter brush strokes, trying not to stray too far in tone (saturation) or value (light/dark) from the base layer. Since this is in the distance, I don't want any of the colors to be overly saturated. The one intentional deviation from this is the darker pops of color representing trees and clumps of bushes as well as the brighter whites and reds hinting at a village on the right edge of the painting.

Also in this stage (of picture taking, at least), I have roughed in the colors of the river and near shore. I use these rough-ins as a base over which to scatter lighter and darker brush strokes, hoping to achieve that "impressionist" effect, and bring in the hints of other colors that I see (or imagine).

I always need to keep reminding myself that oil painting, or most painting I suppose, is about layers. Build the painting up...

Middle - Far Bank, River and Near Shore

The third picture shows the darkening and detailing of the river itself, as well as the detailing of the near bank. A wooden building has been blocked in. The far bank of the river has been cleaned up and highlighted better so it stands out a little more.

Late Middle - River Detail, Near Bank Detail

At this point, I was happy enough with the painting, but had a few issues as I got near the end.

The river (as represented in the prior picture) was blended near both banks, but was made up of choppy highlight brush strokes in the middle. I toned down the middle, roughed up the edges a bit, and generally tried to even out the brush stroke effect. This was successful, I think. The trees on the far bank needed some cleaning up. And the building on the near shore needed a bit of detail, but not too much.

End - Close to Finished (maybe?)

All of which brings this painting to the "almost done" stage.

Studying this last picture and the painting itself is an interesting exercise. The painting is much more vibrant and alive in person, which I attribute to taking most of my pictures inside at night in artificial light.

So... it's time for an honest critique of the work, given that it is not "done done" and can still be tweaked...

The near-bank shoreline is weird and bothers me in places. Between pictures 3 and 4 I already tried to bring the right side of the near shoreline down, and brought it below the roofline of the cabin. This was partly successful but needed to go further: the little "bump" of shoreline just left of the building needs to come down to a cleaner line.

Similarly, the point of land at lower left seems odd to me. This needs to be cleaned up, since it looks like a little cliff hanging over the water. It was supposed to be a sand bar. This needs to be smoothed out. I will probably end up bringing the whole near-side bank down and straightening it out, eliminating the turnback that I am not satisfied with.

With some work left to do, I like this one quite a bit. So does Amp, and so does my sister-in-law. That's worth something. A lot, actually.

As far as effort goes, I started this yesterday (Sunday) and put a total of about 60-90 minutes into it, getting to somewhere between pictures 1 and 2 (basically, picture 2 but with nothing below the far bank of the river done at all). I put another 60 minutes or so into it this evening, for a total thus far of about 2.5 hours. I always find it difficult to quantify how much time I have actually invested in a painting, since I seem to do most of my painting in 10-15 minute bursts. That being said, I'm happy with what I have gotten out of this time...

Final comment... I can't stress enough how freeing it has been to start painting with large tubes of good quality but reasonably priced paints, and good quality but ridiculously low priced canvas panels. It's a simple thing that has gotten me over the fear of wasting more expensive paints on a more expensive surface. Squeeze out big blobs of paint and let it fly. What's the worst that can happen.......