Sunset View Cemetery- Oil sketch

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Oil on Raymar Panel 9×12″

Sadly I wasn’t feeling well enough to join the Benicia Plain Air Painters at Mare Island Friday and Saturday. I was fighting a cold (I won…after 12 hours sleep last night!). On Saturday it took me until 2:00 in the afternoon to get out of my jammies and into the shower, about the time the event was ending. Even though I still felt crummy the weather was beautiful (though windy) so I decided to try painting someplace closer.

The Sunset View Cemetery is quite nearby and has some lovely views so I headed up there. I drove around and around trying to find a spot to paint. Then I walked around, dragging all my gear, finally settling on this view. Unfortunately it was on top of the hill in the bright sun and very windy so I couldn’t use my umbrella to shade the palette and canvas, making color mixing tricky.

Even though I felt funky and tired, once I started painting all I felt was joy and pleasure. Then I ran out of steam after about 90 minutes, just managing to block in the lights and darks. I fiddled with it a bit today but wiped off all my fiddles. I decided I liked it just the way it is so I’m calling it a finished “sketch.” I may try making a larger painting from the sketch.

Value studies

Here are the compositional value studies I did first with Copic Markers (more about the markers). I meant for the tree to be further to the right like the bottom sketch but it ended up being closer to the middle in the painting.

Alla prima in oils vs. watercolor

Two things that are important in working alla prima (all at once instead of in many layers) in oils and very different from my approach to watercolors are:

1) The importance of planning the composition (of course it’s important with watercolor too, but with watercolor you can crop off the bottom or side of a painting if you need to do improve the composition) . With stretched canvas or canvas panels it’s not nearly as easy as just snipping off the offending section or hiding it under a mat.

2) Getting the values (darks and lights) and the color right the first time. In watercolor I’m used to going for an approximation of the right color and then adding washes to make it darker, cooler, warmer, etc. In alla prima painting in oils I’ve learned I need to figure out the values first, then put down the darkest darks, and then the light areas for each main shape. Unlike watercolor, there’s no corrective glazing or washes when you’re working with wet gooshy paint.