Painting Trees and Mountains in Arrowtown, New Zealand - Art and Painting Process

Hello Steemers

Sorry its been a while since I have posted, I've had a very busy week with a bit of travelling involved. Anyway I thought I'd share another post of me painting outdoors 'en plein air'. I love getting outside to paint from life and you can learn so much about painting.

Last week we had a freak spell of cold weather that left snow on the mountains. I'm trying to get better at painting trees and working with the colour green so I've been painting landscapes with an emphasis on trees.

This is the art work I created, a view of the Remarkables mountains with some trees in the foreground.

Remarkables View, New Zealand, 10" x 12", oil on canvas panel.

I went to Arrowtown in New Zealand which is a 20 minute drive from Queenstown where I live. The evening light was beautiful creating vivid colours on the trees, fields and mountains.

I wanted to paint the trees that are in the mid ground but I rearranged them in the painting in order to create a nice composition. 

I set up my pochade box easel and began painting.

I'm painting in oil paints on a 10" x 12" canvas panel. I sketch out the composition with burnt umber.

I start my painting by blocking in the elements in the painting with the darkest tones which in this case is the shadow of the trees and the mountain shadows. From here I can gauge the tonality of the rest of the painting.

I paint the areas in light on the mountains, the colours are chromatically lower so I desaturate my colours. Next I paint the greens in the fields in the mid ground, this is tonally lighter than the trees so the colours I mix must reflect that.

Next I paint the grass in the foreground, I use more saturated green as it's closest to the viewer but I keep in mind that the tone still needs to be light.

I paint the snow on the mountain tops and paint the foliage that is in light on the trees. By this stage the painting is coming together.

I finish up the painting by reworking some of the areas, refining the sky and the trees. I made a small studio adjustment to the painting, I wasn't happy with the hill on the left in the mid ground as it formed a distracting vector in the painting so I removed it.

My finished painting.

I hope you enjoyed my blog post, check out my website for more of my art: samuelearp.com

Subscribe to my mailing list for news, new paintings and art tips and receive a FREE digital art print download of one of my seascape paintings suitable for printing an image of any size: https://www.samuelearp.com/subscribe/