Autumn Woods - completed

Did anyone feel that my maples were a bit too yellow last time? Well I felt so, and I had to do something about it. That’s probably not the only reason why they look like gulmohars and not maples, but I wasn’t too happy with the leaves. I added some flesh tint on them to make them brighter, and darkened the crimson on the other side.

Autumn Woods
Acrylics on Canvas, 18 * 36 inches
(c) Nithya Swaminathan
Original Available

In my previous update, since the leaves had a lot of yellow and were surrounded by more of green and yellows last time, they were getting lost in the grayscale. The barks had a good range of values, but the leaves looked quite flat. I have changed that by adding a lot of dark blues surrounding the leaves, to push forward the maple leaves. And then I correspondingly reduced the yellows in the sunlit areas of the birch barks as well.

Some closeups of the painting for you guys. First is the closeup of the reflections. The reflections have been done by adding the barks first as bright as possible, and then doing several washes of blues and greens, and some browns here and there. Finally to get a better feel of water, I have added some dried leaves floating here and there. I am pretty happy with the reflections overall except for those of the maple leaves. The orange kinda sticks out. I have already got suggestions to tackle it, will probably be washing it over with some darker hues.

Autumn Woods - close up
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

This is a closer look at the middle part of the painting, the ferns and their reflections. This is also my favorite portion of the picture, the part that I am really happy about. I went about randomly doing the ferns but they turned out quite well.I also added some highlights on the ferns. And instead of having the bushes on either side look alike, I made one side have tall grasses. And the middle part is supposed to be a path of some sort, though it may not look like one.

Autumn Woods - close up
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

As I had already mentioned in the previous post, I felt like adding a couple of rocks in the middle. They look really nice, I can tell you. I like the mood that the rocks add, I feel like gingerly stepping on them and walking into those woods, ha!

Autumn Woods - Greyscale
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

Finally, a look at the grey scale, to determine the values in the painting. In this version, I am able to differentiate the background foliage from the maple leaves, which was missing in the previous version. I am fairly happy again with this as well.

While I was checking out slide.com, I just put together the WIP images of this painting and got a slide show done, aint it cool? Shows the flow of the painting from scratch to finish, more importantly shows me my own thought process, how I went off track at several places etc etc. It provides a good learning for me.

Here is a link to this thread at Wetcanvas. Have a look at the amazing results produced by the other artists as well. Such different paintings produced from one image. Awesome fun!

Autumn Woods - an update

I was absolutely dissatisfied with the leaves that I had begun in this painting. I had only done the initial layer and there was still a long way to go, but the first step itself was not in the right direction I felt. Being the oil painter that I am, I had this urge to pick up my palette knife and paint to my heart's content. And yeah, thats exactly what I did.

Autumn Woods - Stage 5
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I have no clue if acrylic painters actually use the palette knife, this was the first time I did. I have used it with oil paintings, and I love the textures the knife generates. My leaves now have got that texture too and I am liking it. The end result is satisfying, though they look like gulmohars and not maples, LOL! The reference image has no clear direction of light, which I wanted to change. Hence I introduced some light from the right side and pushed the darks in the shadows with a lot of blue. Also, I introduced some flesh tint and mild yellows in the barks that face the sunlight, to bring in the sunlit effect. Wonder if I have succeeded fully.

Autumn Woods - detail close up
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

What you see above is a little close up of the leaves, how haphazardly they are done without any actual leaf shapes. I love doing that. I simply picked up some scarlett red, orange and lemon yellow in my knife and went about it without a thought. The dark bluish black lines behind are shadows of the leaves and branches on the trees behind. I introduced these sharp shadows also to accentuate the sunlit effect that I was trying for.

Autumn Woods - stage 6
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I think I would call the top half of the painting done, excepting the ferns in the front. They need some more highlights on them and I am half way with them. I have just begun working on the reflection, have loosely laid in the barks. When I started with the reflections, I felt like adding some wet rocks along the banks. Some rocks with a coating of algae on them. Wonder if it would go along well with the painting or work against it. You will probably get to know that tomorrow.:-)

Autumn Woods – A challenge

This is my latest painting, that I am doing as part of a challenge in the Acrylics forum at Wetcanvas.

Recently, Celeste had done a small sized landscape of Autumn Woods and in the Acrylics forum, she was challenged to do it in a much larger format. Elaine and Celeste also decided to welcome anyone else who would be willing to join in and have fun. So the idea is to paint from a vague Autumn reference and create a painting that's better than the reference image. And the main challenge is to do in a big canvas. I had a 18 * 36 canvas lying idle for quite some time, and thought this was the best chance to use it. Though there are no deadlines as such, I get the motivation to paint on seeing the WIPs of everyone, and it's a lot of fun.

I made some additions to the original image by adding a water body in the foreground, and added some reflections of the woods. I love fall reflections and leaves, so wanted to paint them here. This was also since my canvas was too tall for just the trees. This is a WIP that I hope to complete during this weekend. My parents are visiting us so I am not sure how much work is going to get done, but there will be an update on Monday for sure.:-)

Autumn Woods - Stage 1

This is technically the second stage in the painting, the first one was my canvas filled with scribbles from my daughter! And I started thereafter and added the trees in white and grey. I also blocked the darkest darks with ultramarine blue and a lot of green. And I got most of the sky done too. This will be my first layer.

Autumn Woods - Stage 2

On top of it, I have started adding some greens and ochre yellow in the background, indicative of some bushes.

Autumn Woods - Stage 3

The next thing that I do is to add more foliage. A lot of glowing yellows and greens in the top for the leaves, and there are going to be a lot of orange maple leaves right in the middle. A good thing to do here would be to actually do the tree barks to completion and then do the leaves. But I am as impatient as my daughter, if not more, and I want to get a 'feel' of how everything would look together, so I have started with the leaves right away.

Autumn Woods - Stage 4

And then I start adding some more detail to the barks, nowhere near complete though. I add some darker greys and browns to the birch tree barks. This is where my painting is right now. I have spent about 2 nights on this one, and there is still a long way to go.

Autumn Woods - Foliage close up

Here is a little close up of my leaves which fall on the top left of the canvas. I promise that they are leaves, though they don't look so. I will define the shapes properly as I progress and make sure they look like leaves and not some patches of color thrown in.

Autumn Woods - Trees close up

Here is another close up of the barks, which are still only about 20% done. A lot more to do there as well. It is mind blowing to see the progress of everyone else, and I am learning a lot in the process. And having a hell a lot of fun. I can't wait to get my hands on the canvas tonight.

Watch this space for more updates.

Fall all the way

I love fall colors, maybe more so because I have never experienced it being in Madras all my life! Needless to say such vibrant hues make for great painting subjects as well. For the ATC exchange, I did about 14 landscapes in fall colors. Most of them turned out quite well. Have a look at the first set of those.

Autumn reflections, 2.5 * 3.5 inches, pvt. collection of Pat Halverson
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

The above painting is Chander's favorite among all the cards that I did. I was not very pleased with it initially, I probably tried to do too much in too little space. But it looks quite appealing to me now. I like the scan better than the original!

Across the Bridge - 3.5 * 2.5 inches , Pvt. collection of Mariette Hebert
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

These have been done with colored pencils, with final touches with acrylic paints. I will probably describe the technique in detail later.

In the woods - 2.5 * 3.5 inches, private collection of Monica Gillis
copyright Nithya Swaminathan

I guess this will do for now. I shall post the rest of the paintings later, and I will also flaunt the little gems that I received. A lot of them deserve to be framed, I am absolutely delighted and honoured to have got them. What a treasure!