Landscape -Utah Desert Photoshop Study 1

Landscape -Utah Desert Photoshop Study 1

Still doing landscape studies.  So moved away from the misty landscapes to some images with sharp detail.  I did capture that here but I have planned to do a series of these as well so still some time to learn and improve.  The photos are from Canyonlands in Utah, USA.

Landscape -Canada Photoshop Study 4

Landscape -Canada Photoshop Study 4

Number 4 in this series.  This one definitely got away from me.  The water was OK bit the mountain is a total bust.  By the way I limited myself to 2 hours for all these studies so if things went in the wrong direction there was not much time for me to fix them.  Still more practice to come. 

Landscape -Canada Photoshop Study 3

Landscape -Canada Photoshop Study 3

I continued this series.  The biggest challenge for me is getting texture in these images and controlling edges.  I am still exploring different brushes to get desired effects.

Landscape -Canada Photoshop Study 2

Canada - Landscape

So this is the first of a series of landscape studies - all performed in Photoshop.  I have not done many studies of landscapes so I will spend some time working on these. 

Over all my work practice has taken on a little more focus I hope.  This is because I have made a commitment to practice and get better at Photoshop and traditional media.  This was a decision I made towards the end of the Summer.  The putting it in to practice has been aided by the Deathline Challenge.  More about this later. 

Cactus Plant Photoshop Study

Cactus Photoshop Study

Photoshop Study - Some still life practice.  After this I am going to try a series of landscapes so this is a warm up.

Art for Alexandra - Update

Great news the auction Art for Alexandra raised over  60,000 euro.  This should allow Alexandra to be fitted with a prosthesis which will allow her to continue painting.  A report of the auction here.

Belleek Forest Sunlight in Autumn Oil Painting

Belleek Forest Sunlight in Autumn

As I mentioned earlier I was working on a painting and finished it at the weekend. I was on holidays a few weeks ago and was walking my sisters dog in the local woods. I brought my camera to get some photos with some good brown leafyness. I did take a lot of those kinds of pics but just as I was leaving I turned and took just 2 shots of this scene. I thought it might end up being blown out - facing the sun but this was the one I selected to do some painting practice with. 

The canvas I had was a 20 x 20 cm canvas. Faced the same issue I had with my last painting. A landscape image on a square canvas.  On this one I dropped the detail at the sides.  

I drew the image on the  canvas  using a hard pencil then went to work blocking in the major shapes then left to dry overnight.  

Followed on by working on the foreground then left to dry overnight. 

The next day another few hours on the canopy.  

Then a couple of evenings pushing and pulling areas all over the canvas until I called it done.  All together maybe 10-12 h work.  
It was fun.  Most disappointing element were the tree trunks.  Should have worked on them earlier.  Next time...