Eliot's Art Blog

This is a recap of the twenty-first day of my self-made artist residency.

When I crafted the plan for this residency, I designed it to consist of 2 main phases. During the first phase, I would explore nature, study color and light, and practice painting what I saw directly in front of me. During the second, and final phase, I would take everything I learned during Phase 1 and apply it to a finished studio painting.

Today is the start of the last week of my residency and the kickoff of Phase 2.

The subject

If you’ve been following along, the subject for this weeks painting will look familiar. It’s the same subject I painted at the end of last week on Day 19 – the scene from the trail in Inverness, CA:

When I started the painting last week, I hadn’t intended it to be a study for this larger piece. As I continued working on it, though, I realized there were some changes I could make that would really elevate it as a painting. At a high level, I wanted to paint it larger, I wanted to change the format to be wider, and I wanted to make the whole painting more atmospheric to really show off a sense of distance.

With my subject selected, I headed to the art store to procure an appropriately sized canvas for my project. I decided that I wanted to go both larger and wider than before so I picked up a 15″ x 30″ canvas and got to work.

Day 1 progress

I started by drawing in the big masses and lightly filling some to help me see the differences:

Since this was a larger painting, before moving into colors, I next continued by putting in a monochromatic underpainting to help define the larger shapes and understand the value structure:

I felt happy with that underpainting and decided to get started working from back to front. By the end of the day, I had an initial layer for the sky, background, and middle ground:

Next up, I plan to work on the foreground before I start refining the shapes, tweaking the colors, and adding in details. Since this is a larger painting and since I want to polish it, it will likely take me the full week at least.