I have just returned to an oil painting I planned about a year ago but then abandoned because I felt I really wanted to work on a slightly different oil technique. After having spent some time on much smaller oil paintings and sketches I now feel sufficiently confident to return and try again on the larger canvas.
Unfortunately I had already drawn out the image and started with a burnt sienna Acrylic ground which was the style I first started with, I would now do this very differently by not having such an extensive under-drawing and would use lean washes of the actual colours rather than a sienna ground. I am stuck with this base however but who knows it may work out to my advantage as a orange/red ground can work well with a predominately green covering, we will see!!
Well, first areas laid in using quite loose brush strokes. You can see where the shaded pencil work is showing through ground so it looks quite dirty at the moment but that will eventually be covered up, proved to myself that I really don't need this wasted stage!
A bit further into the process of blocking in. I'm still trying to keep my brush strokes quite fluid and loose, concentrating on a variation of edges and establishing tonal and colour values, these could be slightly adapted once the whole thing has been blocked in however.
I will carry on working on the block-in to see how the overall composition looks so best get back to work!!
