Late afternoon in autumn
På SvenskaCobalt blue, burnt sienna, quinacridone rose and Nickel Dioxine Yellow (a warm yellow)
This motif is from just outside Kävlinge on a beautiful autumn day when the trees start to turn brown. The photo was taken in the afternoon when the low sun creates long shadows and a warm light.
My color choice for the painting are Cobalt Blue, burnt sienna, quinacridone rose and Nickel dioxine yellow. If you do not have cobalt blue, you can use French ultramarine, but avoid all modern synthetic blue colors such as phthalo, Prussian or Indantron. Burnt sienna can probably be replaced with burnt umbra or another orange-brown color, an alternative to quinacridone rose is alizarin. The only requirement for the yellow color is that it should be warm in hue.
Step 1
The first thing you should do in the painting is to cover the paper with colors that roughly correspond to reality. Blue in the sky and brown on everything else, I used cobalt blue and burnt sienna. The paints should be applied wet on wet so that they flow into each other. Use different amounts of water for different parts of the painting, it should not be even surfaces, it may be a little uneven and mottled. The electric pole in the foreground should be saved, simply paint around it.
Step 2
Paint the landscape in the background. Paint one tree at a time wet on wet. Use a few different colors that can flow into each other. I used slightly greenish color mixtures, they must not be too green, feel free to use a little brown as well to give the impression of autumn colors. Because each tree is painted wet on wet, each surface must be allowed to dry before painting the next so that they do not float together.
Step 3
Color the houses and the field to the right in the picture, the grass edge next to the road and the road itself. None of these surfaces should be evenly painted, use similar but still different colors on each surface so that they appear a little uneven and stained. Feel free to paint light wheel-track in the road. Note that all fence poles around the road are unpainted, it must be done so that they do not become too compact, a little white in the fence pole is good. Also paint the large utility pole to the right of the road, it is round in shape, therefore paint it dark on the left side and light on the right.
Step 4
Now some areas remain to be filled in as well as the important shadows. The shade color is mixed of brown and blue. Paint shadows under the roofs of the houses, on all the left side of the fence poles and across the road. Remember that the long shadows over the road should follow the contour of the road, a little higher in the middle of the road and lower at the edges so that the shadow has a slightly curved shape.
