Winterlude Part 3

"Winterlude" almost there!

I keep adding colour and detail throughout the entire scene.  I want to maintain a balance so that I can judge each new brush stroke against the overall look of the painting.  If you concentrate too much on one area you may find that it doesn't work so well after the rest of the painting is completed.  You also run the risk of 'falling in love' with how that particular area of your work looks and you may not want to make necessary changes as you go forward.  By working more or less equally across the painting, you can maintain a healthier and more impartial perspective on your work.

Here I have painted in the distant trees using a mixture of sap green, ultramarine blue and titanium white.  Ultramarine blue dominates to create an illustion of distance.  Now the local colour of the barn is introduced.  I decided on a soft yellow to promote the feeling of bright sunlight on a cold winter day. I add snow to the branches of the spruce tree in front of the barn and generally add more detail to everything.  I introduce a slight hint of warmth in the sky on the right side of the painting, again to establish a feeling of bright sunlight coming from that direction.  Now I embellish the soft shadows in the snow and on the snowy branches in the foreground using a mixture of ultramarine blue and titanium white.

"Winterlude" 9 X 12 inches acrylic on board

I work fairly consistently over the entire painting as I go along, so everything comes together quite nicely as I near the finish.  I add small details and highlights as necessary, such as brightening the snow on the barn roof, spruce tree, fence and middle ground to suggest bright light in these areas.  I add bits of snow in the forks of tree branches beside the barn and I strengthen the blue shadow areas.

The last area to concentrate on is the foreground.  Layers of detail and colour are added to the birds to make them appear close to the viewer.  The pine needles are finished off with darker and more detailed brush strokes using a combination of sap green and lamp black,  The tree branches are painted in quickly with burnt sienna and lamp black in the shadows.

In order to increase the contrast between the sunny background and the shadowed foreground, I add a glaze of ultramarine blue and mat medium over most of the pine branches and the birds until I see a clear division between the two areas.  Once the signature is added, the painting is finished!

Winterlude Part Two

"Winterlude" a work in progress

Now I begin blocking in a few colours to create an underpainting on my illustration board.  The sky is roughed in with a combination of cerulean blue and titanium white acrylic pigments.  Because the light is coming from the right side of the painting, I transition from a very pale colour on the right to a darker sky on the left.  I block in the shadows on the barn roof and in the snow.  The snow surfaces that are directly in sunlight are blocked in with titanium white.  I use cerulean blue to add a few contours to the shaded, snow laden boughs in the foreground.

"Winterlude" one step closer!

I keep adding more colour and more detail, gradually establishing my colour scheme and mood of the painting.  I use cadmium red to wash in basic tones on the male and female cardinals and slowly build contours of light and shadow as I go.  The plumage of the female cardinal is primarily drab and somewhat olive, so I use a combination of cadmium yellow, titanium white and ultramarine blue to create this colour.  The spruce tree in the middle ground and the pine boughs in the foreground are quickly blocked in with sap green.  Next, I introduce burnt sienna on the fencing and bare deciduous trees in the middle ground.  I also build a little more shadow contour on the male cardinal with this colour.  Finally, I paint the sky again with more colour and detail in the blending.  My painting is starting to take shape!

Winterlude

"Winterlude" sketch

I thought I would do a demo of how I paint this Christmas image for licensing.  I do a fair amount of illustrative art for licensing through Porterfield's Fine Art Licensing.  A winter scene is the perfect choice, since the art that is most in demand for licensing is usually a Christmas theme.  These images are often used for greeting cards, puzzles, gift ware and paper products as well as many other possibilites.  A prospective client will review the work I have available for licensing in a given catagory, choose what suits their project and purchase limited rights to use the image for a specific purpose and for a specific period of time.

The first thing I do when producing this type of art is to brainstorm an idea that will appeal to a maximum number of buyers.  Quite often, as in this case, the idea includes a number of similar images that may evolve into a series of finished pieces, all on the same theme.  Once I feel I have enough inspiration to proceed I come up with reference material for my idea.  I file all types of reference and I take digital photos everywhere I go, so I have a lot of material to draw from.  Now I create sketches to work out my design and create any additional parts of my picture from a combination of memory and imagination.  When this is done  I proceed to do a finished sketch on board or canvas to begin my painting.

"Winterlude"

The next step begins by spraying my drawing with a workable fixative to seal the graphite and prevent smearing.  Now I cover the drawing with matt medium that contains a small amount of acrylic pigment to tone the board.  Usually I will mix one muted colour and cover the entire surface evenly to provide a ground instead of glaring white.  Warm earth tones are my usual choice, but blue-gray is an alternative for a cooler, more subdued look.  

This time I wanted to suggest an extreme contrast between the extreme sunlight on the right and the cool shade on the left of my painting, so I toned the matt medium with cadmium yellow on the right and cerulean blue on the left.  I hope to create the illusion of a winter day warmed by the sun.  These colours will influence the paint that I lay over top as I continue to work.

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.

Painting Progression4 - Winter Really is a Blast!

In the final stage of this illustration, I add a sprig of holly to give it a Christmas feel, which is important for licensing.  I apply a glaze over the entire painting to unify all of the colours and to create a tonal cast upon which I will paint my final highlights.  The glaze is a weak mixture of ultramarine blue made extremely transparent by combining with a large proportion of mat acrylic medium.  I mix them together well, and then apply this evenly over the entire surface of the picture.  Once it is dry, I repaint some of the snowflakes and the highlights on the main subject with pure white to make them stand out.  A signature is added and the picture is finished.

Painting Progression3 - Winter Really is a Blast!

I accentuate the shadowing on the scarf before adding a snowflake pattern to the material.  I continue to add detail, both light and shadow, on the fur, eyes and features of the polar bear's face.  More modelling is also added to the mitten.  The last thing that I do at this stage is to paint snowflakes in the air.  I add 'speedlines' to suggest a driving snow storm, in keeping with the title of the piece.  This also creates another illustion of animation in the painting.

Painting Progression - Winter Really is a Blast!

This is a new illustration image that I created for art licensing purposes.  I call this one "Winter Really is a Blast!"  It might do well on greeting cards or flags.  I am working on acid-free illustration board, using acrylic paint over a pencil drawing.  I have drawn the bear leaning into the picture on a bit of an angle to create a feeling of action.  In the first step I blocked in a simple background, delineating my subject and defining the design shape.  I start to block in some basic details with a mixture of ultramarine blue and lamp black on the scarf, touque and face.

Snow Day!

One of the great things about living in Canada when you are a child is winter. Adults may dread it, often finding the cold and snow a hardship to deal with, but children look forward to it all year long. The great thing about a northern winter to a child is lots of snow! When the weather gets stormy, most school buses do not venture out and many schools close for the day entirely. This creates an unscheduled holiday that kids really appreciate.

I created this painting as an illustration for art licensing. I wanted it to be colourful and dramatic in order to convey the excitement of the children. I used my granddaughter Ashley as a model for both the boy and the girl. My work boots fit Frosty perfectly! I added the glow of the sun to warm up an otherwise cool setting. The painting is 9 inches by 12 inches, painted in alkyd on board.

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.

This Time For Sure & Home For Supper

This one is called "This Time For Sure". I wanted to paint a typical day of pickup hockey, played by a bunch of country kids, on a frozen farm pond. When I was a kid, we played like this, sporting any equipment that we had. Many times we would not have skates available and we would play in our boots. The 'net' would usually be non-existant too, and we would improvise with a couple of blocks of firewood from home.

Once again, this painting is done in alkyd oil on stretched canvas and measures 16 inches by 20 inches.

This one is called "Home For Supper". It features the same scene, but in the moonlight instead of mid-afternoon sunshine. Often, we played on the ice until the sun went down and supper time would arrive after dark. Finally realizing that we were late, we would drop our sticks and head for home , a hot meal and the warmth of a country kitchen.

I painted this picture smaller than the others, only 11 inches by 14 inches. It is painted on canvas using acrylic paint.

Dreams of Glory

This is another of my series of paintings on the theme of country kids and hockey. This one gets the girls involved too. I call it "Dreams of Glory". When we were kids, it was common for the boys to dream of playing hockey in the NHL (National Hockey League) and the girls would dream of becoming Olympic figure skaters. The dog was usually happy to just live in the moment, jumping on anyone who happened to take a tumble!

This painting measures 16 X 20 inches. It is painted on stretched canvas using alkyd paint. You can tell it is a good old frosty winter day in the country by the crystal blue sky and the hoar frost on the trees. The farm house and outbuildings in the background, along with the style of clothing worn by the kids, suggests the 1940's and 1950's. My favourite part of this painting is the low sheen of the ice surface, suggested by the soft reflections and the crisp skate marks that define the surface.

Wall of Fame

The month is flying by and I haven't found time to publish another post until now. This is one of a series of five paintings that I completed on the theme of nostalgic memories of winter skating in the country. The time period is the 1950's. In those days, hockey skates were made of uninsulated leather, dyed deep brown or black, or often a two-tone combination of the two. I call this painting "Wall of Fame". It represents the dreams and aspirations of many boys who grew up in rural areas, playing pick-up hockey on farm ponds and rivers, hoping some day to play in the NHL. In those days, the league consisted of only six teams and any school boy could name every player on every team.

The painting is done on stretched canvas, rendered in alkyd paint, over an acrylic underpainting. It measures sixteen inches high by 20 inches wide. Since I no longer had my own skates from my boyhood years, I purchased this pair in a country auction to use as a model for the painting. I hung them on our barn wall and leaned a hockey stick that I had in the garage beside them to create an interesting grouping. The rough texture of the weathered barn boards make an interesting background for the polished leather surface of the skates. I added some snowflakes in the air to create an atmosphere of winter and a sense of animation in what otherwise is a still life.

Painting Progression-Seasons Greetings-Step 6

The sky in the background is finished off and the afternoon setting sun is highlighted a bit more.  It is positioned near the snowman's carrot nose and sparkling eyes, helping to attract the viewer's eye to the center of interest of the painting.  The snow-laden tree branch, which also points at Frosty's face, also thrusts into the picture, drawing the viewer's eye back in.  The Cardinal is finished in with more color and detail.  The bird is positioned to keep the viewer's eye going back and forth between these two characters.  The Christmas tree and ornaments are painted in and white highlights are added to create a reflective shine.  I add darks and highlights to Frosty's mittens and make small adjustments throughout the painting, where needed.  A light scattering of new snow falling adds greatly to the feeling of depth and a sense of animation.  The signature goes on and the painting is complete!

Painting Progression-Seasons Greetings-Step 5

With all of the basic color decisions made, I can now work up detail in every area of the picture.  It is a simple matter to decide where adjustments need to be made once the picture has a complete color map.  The snowman's face is the main focal point, so I try to accentuate his kind, lovable expression. I add soft blue to his coal black eyes to create a luminous shine. Next, I add a sparkle to them with a white highlight.  A strong, bright red on the scarf and ear muffs give him a dashing, festive look.  I use warm yellow highlights on the mittens and a healthy bright orange on his carrot nose.

In order to liven up the snowman's body, I add strong blue-purple in the shadow areas, and I build a texture over the highlighted surfaces with a dry brush effect of heavy pigment.  Frosty is rapidly coming to life as the paint steadily goes on! 

Painting Progression-Seasons Greetings-Step 4

Now I begin to paint over the initial blocked-in areas of color.  The sky is refined and painted more heavily, blending the tones together.  The background trees are worked up a bit more, adding some detail and texture.  The old fedora on Frosty's head is painted in and the sprig of holly is added, too.  His features, carrot nose and colorful scarf get more hue, texture and detail added to them, and the picture begins to take on more life and a feeling of depth.  More color and contours are added to the woollen mittens and an initial layer is added to the tree decorations.  Each step taken is another building block in the structure of the painting.  The work is evolving as a whole, rather than one part at a time.  In this way, I always know how all the elements in the picture relate to one another.  My goal is to avoid painting myself into a "corner" along the way.

Painting Progression-Seasons Greetings-Step 3

Now I paint in all of the basic areas using simple colors.  I am working with acrylic paint thinned with water.  For the background sky, I create a  wash of soft blue which I bleed into the yellow of the late afternoon winter sun.  Care must be taken to avoid creating a sickly green where the yellow and blue tones meet.  Each area I add helps to create a map of what the finished piece should look like.  With the basic colors laid in, it is easy to decide what adjustments to make and to which areas in order to create the look that I want.  If I painted one area completely before working on another, I would probably need to change it later, in relation to other areas in the picture.  It is best to work over the entire picture, building a solid foundation first.