Rees Valley

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Comment by Jane Albin on November 25, 2011 at 9:07

Hi I'm back.  I've been under the weather for the past few days.

Stu, You are right about the yellow highlights.  I have two yellows - a lemon, and a cad.light.  I was considering the cadmium as my 'warm' yellow and the lemon yellow as my 'cool' yellow.  I have a Naples yellow that I thought looked warmer but is really opaque and not my favorite purchase.  I will definitely get a cadmium yellow medium. Thanks for the tip.

Barbara, Thanks for your comments. I 'sort of' understand the feeling of watching rain ruin paint.  I happened to me while painting the exterior of our cottage. I could actually see the paint flowing away and into the dirt. :)

Comment by Barbara Stucki on November 22, 2011 at 19:55

Jane, I really love your painting, the colors are beautiful and I like your middle ground, very interesting. I also like the far mountains great light. Also I saw your comment about your friend who uses water miscible oils en plain air. So do I but there is one draw back, I was caught in a cloud burst on top of a mountain and the rain washed all the paint off of my canvas. I was laughing and crying in the middle of lightning, wind and heavy rain.

Comment by Stuart J. Gourlay on November 21, 2011 at 4:31

Jane, this is just a really nice painting.  I don't know what Otto's comment about your paintings from a year ago was about; it sounded like he had seen a lot of improvement in your technique; I would agree that it is very good right now.  I would keep doing whatever you have been doing to further improve, but I can only find one nit-picky criticism of this work; your highlights in the far valley should be grayed down a little, as you have done on your sunlit mountainsides to give a little more atmospheric perspective, but their chroma actually pulls my eye right into the far valley.   If you are using cad yellow pale or another primary yellow for your warm whites, try shifting to cad yellow medium or even cad yellow warm or their equivalents (Hansa or other).  Tim Horn in an outdoor  workshop a couple of years ago told me to take cad yellow pale off my palette and use cad yellow medium or warm and it would pump up the warmth in my sunlit areas; I did, and it worked; white is a very cool color.   I am still hoping that Richard will give you a critique.  Stu

Comment by Jane Albin on November 21, 2011 at 3:52

Thanks Stu.  I went with this layout in order to avoid the lower left corner. :)  Thanks re the distant mountains. They actually have a slight yellow cast in the highlights (but I couldn't seem to get that in the photo.)  I fixed the closer back left mountain after reading Richard's critique to Dania.  I really liked her greens in that area.  Jane

Comment by Stuart J. Gourlay on November 20, 2011 at 13:57

Jane, terrific painting.  Good movement of the eye back into the painting.  You handled the left lower corner very well.  I like that you made this into a panorama with a wide canvas.  I particularly like your distant mountains.  I hope Richard critiques this.  It is really nice work.  Stu

Comment by Jane Albin on November 20, 2011 at 8:30

Phew!  Finally got this uploaded. I'm still not happy with the photo. The yellows seem to have faded. This is from a photograph done outside with my little Canon powershot.  I think my scanner makes a better copy.