Greener Pastures

Every next painting I do lends itself to a new challenge and a new learning experience for me. This one was no different. I just love it when I see one spot all lit up by sunlight breaking through the clouds. This particular afternoon I saw cows grazing on the lit up area making a fantastic contrast and it just seemed like they had found greener pastures.

I took several reference photos and started studying clouds in that same situation in the afternoons so that I could transpose the information to this rendering. I was able to study them from my studio window as well though I wasn't en plein air, I still got to use the same information.

I started out as usual with a grisaille underpainting of a mixture of raw umber, ultramarine blue and, dioxizine purple. I then layered scumbled several passes of color to create the voluminous clouds and depth in this rendering.