Landscape Painting using the indirect method for Mabry Mill, a local Virginia landmark.

These first layers are usually pretty loose, but it can be done in which the under-painting is very near completion with fine details included already. Many artist's in the past employ this form of painting. Artists including Van Eyck, El Greco, and Rembrandt used these techniques in their paintings.

A few things to always remember when painting indirect, is to follow the fat over lean concept. Another thing to remember is that in the color layers, many changes can take place that you may not have considered, so think about what your final statement is going to be in those regards.

Lets take this example. Say you have a dried yellow layer color on the canvas. You come back over with a cadmium red, very thickly. This can obscure the yellow altogether. Thin the red just a bit and you now have a very vibrant orange on your canvas due to the optical blend of paints. This can be obtained also with the heavy red and a brush stroke that allows the underlying yellow to show in between. Your eye will turn this to orange.

To get a complete run down on these effects, check out Richard Robinsons Color mixing video. Now this orange on your canvas is a completely different orange, then what you would have achieved by mixing red and yellow on the palette. The indirect mixing of colors is said to give a more luminous vibration, rather like that seen in stained glass when light passes through it. To see it for yourself, make a color chart and experiment with a few colors over top of others to see their resulting effect.

By exploiting this characteristic of the oil painting technique, painters found that they could develop a much more brilliant luminosity whose character was unobtainable in the direct techniques.

The procedures most commonly used in indirect painting are called glazing and stumbling. These methods can be used in still life, portrait and as in this demo, landscape painting.

So onto my short demo here of a landscape painting using the indirect method.

In this piece, I used the Artograph Designer Projector to copy the main mill buildings and some of the surrounding trees.

I get out my reference material which come from photo's through several seasons, both my own and some from the web through royalty free and forum sites.

I will make announcements within my e-zine as progress takes shape and finalization's are in process. Those signed up to my e-zine will get a very attractive introductory price!

I also want to give a quick shout out to Roena King and Paul Baswell, both are contributors to the site, and have been instrumental in getting me through this painting. Without their help, it simply wouldn't have happened!

It's been awhile since I've done a landscape painting and the challenges were well worth the effort. Their keen eyes and help in critiquing have made what would have been a mediocre painting become not only a great painting, but one that will be the subject of an entire e-book.

The book will show all my struggles with this piece, and how they were overcome. From value issues, color problems and perspective (yes, I still have problems with these issues too!) I will also tell you how Richard Robinsons Color course helped me with my aerial perspectives and color choices in the final layers! You can see my course review here:

Richard Robinson's Color Course REVIEW

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