Welcome to the Cotswold Art Club

TOM HUGHES – LANDSCAPES IN OIL

After obtaining a degree in illustration, Tom spent seven years designing magazine and book covers. When the industry declined he changed to oils. Working from from life, his subject matter included still life, portraits, coastal and street scenes. For outdoor scenes he stuck to a two hour window to complete a painting before the light changed.

For his demonstration Tom painted a busy street scene using an A4 sized, oil primed MDF board. He worked from an image on an iPad. A tip was to turn down the brightness to 70% for a realistic tone.

When choosing an image, he uses the rule of thirds to create an interesting composition and looks for the biggest shapes first, then subdivides them, thinking analytically of the shapes rather the actual subject.

When outlining shapes, don’t use grey or black but the correct colour each time to keep them true to the original and not merge muddy edges.

Check the direction of the sun when making shadows. Identify the darkest and lightest shades for colour reference points. Block in key areas with two versions of each colour, one opaque and one transparent using a big brush. Wipe off excess moisture for next layer. Use an accurate angle of brush strokes as to the direction of light.

Remember that shadows will always reflect blue from the sky on a sunny day especially on white buildings.

At the last stage, paint the sky first in the accurate colour. This will help get the all the other colours correct in comparison for the rest of the painting. Finally pick out focal points using a small brush for detail.

In this painting, it was a red telephone box, a yellow shop front and number plate.

In June on one of the hottest days of the year Anne travelled to Cheltenham to provide us with an insight in to how she approaches painting out doors.

With a trip pod to hold her canvas and an ingenious attached palette, Anne has borrow from the tools musicains use to create her tool kit.

She starts with a quick sketch to work out her tonal areas, working through 5 stages from dark to light, this is then replicated on the canvas with quick brush strokes to sketch the design out and provided the darker areas.

The scene was of dappled shade along a path through the trees, with bright sunshine on the left and some darker areas towards the back.

She then began to build up the foliage with a variety of green mixes working from dark to light.  She demonstrated how to use the scene to be painted to be guided by it but not to fix it exactly as seen.  Some areas can be exaggerated and others left out entirely.  

She then discussed how this would be finished in the studio and could make the basis for a larger painting.

NEXT DEMONSTRATION

Currently on the summer break
More information about this years schedule is on Club Meeting Page