Across the Miles - Step 5

I have now blocked in the entire canvas with colour.  Finishing the snow-cover changes the mood and the look of the painting quite drastically. This gives me a really good idea of how the finished painting will look.  The contours, light and shadows in the snow requires a subtle touch.  It is important to create the illusion of an undulating plane, falling away from the foreground to the mountains in the distance.  The roadway must also appear to 'sit' into the snow rather than on top of it.  The fence now appears to stand up from the snow, three dimensionally.

Painting and refining the white lettering on the side of the postman's sleigh is meticulous work and requires patience.  There is more work in this painting than I expected!

Across the Miles - Step 4

I continue the process of painting from back to front.  I render the barn in the distance, then proceed to the farm house in the middle ground.  Once again, I am choosing warm colours to keep this winter picture from becoming too 'cold'.

The next thing I tackle is the horse pulling the mail sleigh.   This is a critical element in the painting, essentially the center of interest so I must take great care in how I paint it.   I choose to make the horse black to create a high contrast with the white snow around it.

At this stage, I have left out the snow in the middle ground and started blocking in basic colour and detail on the rail fence in the foreground.  This helps me to keep a visual balance throughout the painting.  I have included the rail fence in the composition in order to add 'weight' to the lower portion and to guide the eye back toward the center of interest.

Across the Miles - Step 3

Usually I like to do a quick underpainting with acrylics on top of my toned canvas, but occasionally I will start to paint directly on a toned and shaded drawing.  I have decided to take the latter approach this time, starting from the sky at the top (furthest away from the viewer) and working my way down and progressively closer to the viewer as I go.  This allows me to build an illusion of depth into the work.

To keep the work from being too 'cold', I add warm yellows and pinks to the clouds, suggesting late-day lighting from the left.  I block in the snow-covered hills and move forward through the heavily laden spruce trees.  The last thing I do at this stage is to begin adding more form and colour to the mailman's sleigh and the mailbox where he has just made a Christmas delivery.

Across the Miles - Step 2

Now I start my under painting by priming the canvas with a mixture of acrylic made up of burnt sienna, cadmium red and a generous amount of mat medium to make it very transparent.  I apply this evenly over the entire canvas to give it a warm ground for me to paint on.

Once that is dry, I use a mixture of the same colours, but with less medium and I wash in some tonal areas to establish some basic form.  I work up some darker areas using the same colours and I delineate some details, such as the rail fence, sleigh, the horse and the buildings.  I place dark tones on the fir trees to establish a pattern of snow on the upper side of the branches.  Things are starting to take shape!

Across the Miles

Here is the beginning of another new 'horse and sleigh' painting.  These pictures are especially popular with my clients for such things as Christmas cards and puzzles.  This one is called "Across the Miles".  It is a depiction of the mailman making his delivery rounds by horse drawn sleigh.  The scene is a snowy landscape in rural America, just before Christmas.

This canvas measures 16 inches high by 20 inches wide.  Once I have worked out my initial drawing, I transfer it to stretched canvas, then spray it with workable fixative.   Once that is done, I'm ready to start painting!

Sleigh Ride!

This painting has been very popular for my collectors and also licensing clients. It is the perfect Christmas image, both nostalgic and exciting! The horses are galloping briskly along the roadway with a frisky dog leading the way. The period dress of the sleigh's occupants suggest Victorian times, when horse and sleigh were the main mode of winter transportation. You might also notice a buffalo skin rug in their laps, which was used to keep travellers warm. The old wooden pump in the lower right corner is now a thing of the past. These pumps were carved entirely out of wood by skilled craftsmen!

The limestone house in the background was once owned by my wife and I. The beautiful blue spruce tree stands just as I have painted it, beside the house in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The historic stone church in the background actually exists in Barriefield, just across the Rideau River.

I chose to paint a colourful winter sky in keeping with the animated feeling of the overall painting. This gave me the opportunity to reflect all of these colours in the snow and gives the picture additional life. The painting measures 18 inches high by 24 inches wide. It is painted in alkyd paint on a canvas support. The original is not for sale, but prints are available at: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/richard-de-wolfe.html Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

An Old Fashioned Christmas

I thought it was time to post a real Christmas painting. I call this one "An Old Fashioned Christmas". Plenty of nostalgia depicted here, about a much slower and innocent time, when most people lived in the country or at least very small towns and villages across Canada and the United States. In those days the main mode of winter transportation was by horse drawn sleigh or 'cutter'. The scene is typical of many communities in Easter Canada and the North- eastern United States. It is dawn on Christmas morning, and people are gathering at the church for an Early Christmas service.

My composition is based on an "S" pattern. The eye enters from the lower left following the direction of the horse and sleigh, over the bridge to where the figures in front of the church are congregated, and finally the church itself. The stone mill beside the church and the mail boxes in the lower right corner lead the eye back to the horse and sleigh approaching the bridge and the whole process is repeated. The snow covered spruce tree acts as a visual stop and keeps the eye from wandering off to the left.

The painting measures 48 inches wide by 30 inches high. It is painted on stretched canvas, and as I usually do, I worked in alkyd paint. I found this cutter in a Sotheby's auction catalogue and I loved the ornate style. It is being pulled smartly by a high stepping Hackney Horse.

Collecting the Sap

Here is another painting that I think is well suited to the season, here in Ontario. Our maple sugar and syrup making season has just ended for another year. The tradition of collecting sap from sugar maple trees is well known in eastern Canada and the north eastern USA. It is done in early spring when the sap stored in the roots of the maple tree begins to travel back up the trunks of these trees, to feed the buds that will soon blossom into leaves. Small holes are carefully drilled around the circumference of the tree and 'taps' or 'spiles' are driven into these holes to collect some of the sap as it flows upward. The sap, in turn, is allowed to drip into pails attached to the tree, or as is most common today, into a network of plastic tubing, which may run for miles to a central collection point. The sap must be boiled down quickly to avoid spoilage. It takes approximately eleven gallons of raw sap to produce one gallon of delicious maple syrup.

For the most part, tractors and modern equipment have replaced the horses and sleighs that were traditionally used in collecting the sap for delivery to the 'sugar shacks' for the long process of boiling over a wood fire. If you look hard enough, it is still possible to find teams of horses, such as the Belgians pictured here, being used in the bush to bring tanks of sap to the wood fired evaporators and maple sugar shacks.

The title of this painting is 'Collecting the Sap'. This painting measures 18 inches by 24 inches. I painted it on stretched cotton canvas, using alkyd paints. Prints are available.

Painting Progression-Sleigh Bells-Step 7

I have blocked in the rest of the foreground snow and shadows, creating a rutted look in the surface of the roadway and contours in the mounded snow at the shoulders of the road.  The contour lines of the road help to draw the eye into the picture and the horses appear to be in motion as they draw the unseen sleigh forward. 

Painting Progression-Moonlight Travelers-Step 7

I paint in the near horse, keeping it whiter and more detailed than the off side horse, again to create a feeling of depth and to control the viewer's eye.  Lighter objects, with more detail and contrast attract more attention in a picture.  The sleigh and occupants are painted in, along with any final details and accents here and there.  The last thing is my signature, and the painting is complete! 

 If you are interested in originals or prints of my work, please visit my website and see what is available.  I am also always happy to discuss commissions if you have a special project in mind.

Painting Progression-Moonlight Travelers-Step 6

Now the painting is really starting to come together.  I paint detail into the trees, starting with the most distant ones first, keeping them light and more blue in the distance.  The snow on the branches is light blue, rather than white.  The trees in the middle ground have more local color and more definition to bring them further forward.  The snow on those branches is lighter in color, too.  In the foreground, I have painted the snow in dramatic shades of blue and lavender with subtle highlights of creamy yellow.  I have done this to create an atmosphere of light reflecting from the building along with ghostly moonlight and shadow.  There is virtually no white used in the snow.  This will make the moon seem much brighter, since it is the lightest object in the picture, other than the horses in the foreground.  I want to keep some attention on them, so they are almost as bright as the moon itself.  I have started to overpaint the far horse, keeping the tones subdued relative to the near horse to create a sense of depth in the painting.  More color and detail has also been added to the building to finish it off as the feature element dominating the picture.

Painting Progression-Moonlight Travelers-Step 5

I have already given the team of horses much attention, painting over the initial acrylic underpainting with alkyd paints.  The sleigh has started to take shape as well.  I continue to overpaint the Victorian mansion with alkyd paints, giving it a warm glow in contrast to the cool blue moonlight sky.  There is much intricate detail in this grand building and much care must be taken to do it justice.  The snow is embellished with both warm and cool colors to reflect the night sky and the warm building lights.  

Other details begin to fall into place, and the picture is beginning to take on the feeling of depth and atmosphere that I want to achieve.  The horses and sleigh seem to be trotting briskly along the roadway, leaving the building behind as they come forward toward the viewer.  The shadows beneath the horses and sleigh testify to the brightness of the moonlight and anchor these figures to the surface that they are moving over.

Painting Progression-Moonlight Travelers-Step 4

Now I switch from acrylic paint to oil or alkyd or a combination of both.  Oil and alkyd paints are completely intermixable and can be used in any ratio if you want to mix them together.  It is quite acceptable to paint oil based paints over top of acrylic but never the other way around, since acrylic paints are water based.  Here I have painted in the night sky and the moon, giving it a bit of a glow.  By adding a few stars in the sky, I have created a nice backdrop for the majestic victorian building, which is the centerpiece of the painting.

Painting Progression-Moonlight Travelers-Step 3

My underpainting is executed in acrylic paint, just blocking in basic colors and defining shapes and areas and how they relate to each other.  It is much faster to work in acrylic rather than oils or alkyd when working out the initial color scheme.  This is a great way to establish a simple map of the painting and to foresee any problems that may arise later on.  I don't worry about exact colors or any real detail, just a general impression of how things should look. 

Painting Progression-Moonlight Travelers-Step 2

After fixing my pencil drawing on the canvas, I use a transparent mixture of acrylic color and mat medium to tone the surface.   I use a combination of burnt sienna and cadmium red to give the canvas a warm, rich ground to paint on.   Now I no longer have to try to compensate for the bright white of the canvas when I apply paint to my drawing.

Painting Progression-Moonlight Travelers-Step 1

Once again, I have a painting of horses for this demonstration.  Horses are not my only subject, but it seems as if most of the paintings that I have documented as I work, happen to have horses in them.  This one is a scene rather than a portrait and brings many other elements into play.

This is my initial pencil drawing on canvas.  I have incorporated a large amount of detail into this drawing, especially in the complex areas such as the victorian building, the horses and sleigh and the figures within.  I use a spray fixative to hold the pencil from smudging when I begin to paint.