# 33 today, and really an exercise in speed painting. I aimed to keep it at under an hour and I did, although I spent an extra 10 minutes afterwards adding more detail on my birch trees. This was a really fun, relaxed painting. I find everything went rather smoothly. This is also the first time I experience success using the 1 inch brush to add highlights to trees (to the left and right of the painting). I'm always kind of stingy with the paint, so I often run into the issue of there not being enough paint on my brush. I used the titanium white quite liberally today and it was much easier. It takes a surprisingly large amount of paint to get highlights to stick properly. This was on a smaller canvas - 16x20. I used an old oval plate I got at a thrift shop to make the border, which I cut out of contact paper.
Comments
This as super painting! Everything is great there! Birches are wonderful! I like how you did the branches!
Super job Lightsnow. Watching this immediately motivates me to try it myself one of these weeks. That pinkish and purple glow in sky and water is awesome. Not to mention the birches, such details. And you did very well with the one inch highlights, I am healthy jealous! :)
Thanks everyone. If there's any advice I can give at the moment, it would be the following: This was a semi-decent canvas that claimed to have 'one coat of primer' and I only added one extra thin coat myself. The level of tooth was ideal. Overall, loosen up and enjoy. Instead of focusing too much on what I was doing, I put my unwashed two inch brush with remaining liquid white on it right into some crimson and then a bit of blue, brush mixed. I just quickly tossed in some pink and lavender glow in the sky without thinking too much. Then you blend to your liking. For the other details - use a lot of paint! I used a lot of titanium white on the corner of a fan brush for the clouds. I decided to try the Van Gogh brand white. Good stuff! Nice and dry. Then you fluff it gently with the two inch brush. I created the distant hills with a fan brush and used that brush to gently pull upwards at the hill tips to create the illusion of distant trees. I blended with the two inch in between layers of hills to create a misty effect. For the distant evergreens, I used a smaller brush I got at a dollar store of all places. It worked fantastic. One thing I learned overall is to cake your one inch brush in so much paint, like a ridiculous amount of paint, so that all of the bristles stick together and your brush looks like it has a sharp edge. Then, you just softly use the corner to apply tree highlights. As I had mentioned, I was always kind of reticent to add too much paint since oil paint is expensive, but it absolutely is necessary if you want to make highlights this way. Also, thin all of your snow highlights with liquid white! Thin sticks to thick ;)
Lightsnow, please make an article out of this, entitled "How to paint 'Icy lake', by Lightsnow". Everybody should read this, it got me really tempted to try this one soon!
Honestly, I was completely oblivious about the article section until I read your comment! Thanks so much for pointing that out. I just read all the wonderful articles our other members have written. For example, I saw Dracula's article on how to paint better evergreens and I remember asking for this one. I will try and figure out how to write an article about this one soon. Thanks for the feedback!
No worries Lightsnow, glad to help you. And as I saw your comment, it only needs few adjusting to make it a nice article. Add pictures (close ups, tools or similar) if possible!!
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Wow! Incredible results in an hour! The distance and atmosphere are very effective and your liner brush work is very detailed and naturalistic. Great work!