I’m sharing a painting that I did as a “paint-along” with a new student.  I chose the photo from our recent trip to New England as one that would be good for an underpainting.  I liked the simplicity of the background, compared with the richness of the foreground. The picture was one of many I filmed at the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. What you are seeing at the top is water and distant land with a bridge.  There is no sky, but it really doesn’t matter. It was a hazy day, so the distance was not clear at all, just shapes, which I liked.

I did the underpainting, choosing two values of oranges for the upper portion and various warm and cool reds, red violets, browns, etc. for the foliage and I think an aqua for the rocks. I indicated the trees lightly in charcoal or graphite but didn’t include them in the underpainting. However, I worked on them before putting in the color in the water and distant land, going back and forth between trees and background. Since the trees had to be fairly dark, I didn’t want to try to paint them over layers of quite light blues. This was not the easiest photo for my student, Monir. He is from Bangladesh, where there are no trees that look anything like this! But the integration of rocks, grasses, bushes and trees was a good one to work with and something he’s been wanting to improve on.

Acadia View, 14 x 11, UART 400