I started this project with some preparations on my own, before delving into mixing greens.

Preparations

I had been looking forward to this project because I expected to learn a lot from the guided exercises in mixing colours. As a preparation, I had stocked up my watercolours to add more variety to my initial five or six Winsor & Newton Artist watercolours in tubes. I also have a selection of Schmincke Artist watercolours, but these are in pans and I wanted to continue working with tubes.

Before starting with the exercise, I made a colour chart of all new colours to provide myself with a reference for the future. I find this helpful because the real colours are different from those I see when I print out the manufacturer’s colour chart. But when I opened the tubes for the first time, many of them had been under pressure and much more colour than I needed came out. I decided to keep that excess on the palette and do some practice sheets to use them up.

My conclusion from the previous project was that I needed to develop skills in working with the transparency of watercolours, and I also knew that I needed some practice with even and graded washes. I thought I’d practice this on a small scale first, then expand to larger scale.

I prepared a sheet with 7 x 5 small squares of about 4.5 cm side length each, and started with my rest of Payne’s Gray. I tried to cover squares evenly and also tried to obtain gradations from dark to light colours. While the even washes were ok, I wasn’t able to make a graded wash, despite many tries. Somehow the colour always went back to even distribution over the entire area. To loosen up a bit, I also experimented with mark making and made a second sheet with faded tones until all the colour was used up.

 

I proceeded with the same type of exercise and made more sheets in different black tones, then brown tones. I practiced dry-on-wet and wet-on-wet techniques both for washes and for mark making, and also made some dry-brush marks. I really enjoyed this and found it nice for a change not to worry about representational details. I observed how the paint and the water interacted and tried to get the right amount of paint loaded on the brush for just one square.

 

I had much fun, but made no progress in graded washes even after the fifth sheet. I have had problems with graded washes ever since the start and somehow wasn’t able to improve from the explanations in the course materials alone. So finally, I consulted some internet resources for technical advice. There was one resource with a very simple hands-on explanation of a small scale graded wash, with a detailed explanation how to mix and add water and handle the brush, and this worked for me. So it was on the sixth sheet that the first moderately successful graded washes appeared. Finally! I made another sheet of squares in brown tones focusing more on mark making than washes, and then found it was time to try something else for the rests of the red tones.

 

I painted a series of three sheets with organic shapes, based on wavy lines drawn in pencil as an outline pattern. My focus was on applying colour in different ways over irregular shapes, rather than squares, in particular
– Even distribution over a larger area
– Gradations
– Different colour intensities in a single go
– Intensity variations through layering

This took up aspects that were practiced in the monochrome studies, and it was a nice review of what I learnt there. I found my colour applications rather irregular and in need of more practice. There seems to be a some progress over the three sheets in that I produced less water flowers, indicating a bit more control over the amount of paint I applied to fill the shapes. The final two red tones were used to practice washes again, this time on a larger squares of around 8 x 8 cm. Both even and graded washes are somewhat improved here.

 

 

The mangos

Then as a final preparatory stage I got back to the mango. I had some problems with the mango in my assignment 2 still life, and my tutor suggested I might practice depicting this object by making several simple and quick studies wet-in-wet. So this was my first try at mango studies, deliberately made before the colour mixing exercise with the idea of hopefully assessing progress later on. I pre-selected my colours: Broken yellow, orange, a blueish red, Hooker’s green, and black.

I think they are just moderately successful, but colour intensity improved over my earlier mango. The mango had a lighter area of colour right at the contour before the dark cast shadow, which I found difficult to paint. I also had problems with the contours of the cast shadow: There was a stripe of lighter tone at the outer edge, and the contours were soft. I did not know how paint this, but in the last mango I dissolved the contours of the shadow with a wet brush which seemed to work, only the lighter stripe is still missing.

Mixing greens 1: Mixing greens with other colours directly

Then finally I was ready to approach exercise 1. It took some time to make sense of the instructions, because the text and the illustration do not really correspond and the explanations are not exactly in the order of a task squence. But after reading several times, I finally grasped the central idea: Mixing two (or more) different greens with yellow, blue and brown tones, and doing this over a sequence of 8 mixing steps from one colour to the other. I used
– two greens: Viridian and Hooker’s Green
– Three yellows: Cadmium Yellow, Winsor Yellow, New Gamboge
– Three browns: Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Van Dyke Brown
– Four blues: French Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Prussian Blue, Cerulean Blue
– And Payne’s Gray

I included Payne’s Gray because I often use this to darken other colours and perceive it as a blueish tone. From the first to the second sheet, I think there’s some improvement in the mixing. The first mixes are quite irregular and I think the colours were too concentrated, thus the colours are not even. I sometimes made the opposite error of becoming too faint, but overall I was quite satisfied with the result.

  

I was surprised that there was not much difference between the two bright yellows when mixed with either green. Both yellows produce a lemon tone when mixed with green. The main difference was in the greens themselves – one was a blueish green (Viridian), the other a yellowish green (Hooker’s green). The same I found true for the blues and browns. Instead, the main effect came from mixing in a green tone, but it did not matter very much which green this was. The second important effect seemed to come from colour intensity – the same mix looks very different, depending on its intensity.

What I did not like so much was the feeling of using expensive artist watercolours just for experimenting with mixes and practice with washes. But then again, it was nice to know that the mixing chart will keep its colours over the years, and at least this way I have the experience with the material I want to use for paintings. But with cheap art materials I feel more in the mood for experimentation and generous application of colour, at least that was my prior experience. So I think I’ll also stock some less expensive watercolours to develop technical skills with washes and for experimentation.

Mixing greens 2: Layering blues and yellows

I made several of the mixes on a single large sheet. I found the greens that resulted from the layers not very convincing, but nevertheless the effect was interesting. I also liked how the colours mixed themselves when applied wet-on-wet. I think it is more convenient to use a green pigment as a basis for green objects, rather than mixing blue and yellow, and add other colours to obtain the desired tone. This probably prevents the colours from getting muddy too early.

Mixing greens 3: Layering a single tone vs applying direct mixes

The central idea of this exercise was to practice two different pure approaches: To layer colours until the desired tone is achieved, versus pre-mixing colours that are applied directly and not layered.
I began with a sketch of my bottle, then proceeded to watercolours. For the first painting I used a mixture of Hooker’s Green and Bismuth Yellow, applying that colour in layers from very light to relatively intense tones. I added the window sill for some background. It’s true that this mixture did not permit to obtain really dark tones, but I wouldn’t say that the colours are dull and liveless as the course material describes the typical result of this technique.

  

The second painting was made using a photo as source, because light conditions had changed in the meantime. I used Bismuth Yellow, Sap Green and Payne’s Gray to mix various green tones and applied them directly. I had difficulties with the technique because I had a tendency to include all the tiny shapes that had a slightly different tone from their background, and this was too complex to paint in the prescribed order from light to dark. I wasn’t able to make a single uninhibited brush stroke because there were constantly lighter or darker areas around which I was supposed not to overpaint because this would have led to layering. Put to this extreme, the approach didn’t work for me very well, although I think the resulting painting was not that bad. The colours are indeed livelier because of the different mixtures used.

I wanted to give it another try because I had still been layering quite a bit, rather than pre-mixing all the tones. So the third painting is a purer version of the technique. It was made on the next day from the real bottle (not the photo), with rather similar light conditions as the first. I tried to simplify the green tones to around five or six from light yellowish green to a dark olive tone, and also tried to make larger shapes less interrupted by tiny areas in different tones. I think this painting is slightly improved because of simpler forms on top of the bottom.

Overall, the second techique felt very artificial, and a bit like “painting-by-numbers” because there was so much analysis and planning involved to identify the areas of different tones from light to dark and not overpaint. Personally I’d prefer a looser combination of both techniques and would like to try a faster working style with layering and some wet in wet application of colour.

I’m quite satisfied with the background wash in the third painting, it was made using a rose-brown tone and after a first attempt on dry paper I corrected by wetting the paper, dissolving the edges of earlier brush strokes and paint an almost even graded wash. It is a bit faint but I think the technique was a step towards the right direction.

Mixing greens 4: Several bottles painted with mixed greens

In preparing for this project, I had collected some green bottles. But I hadn’t looked at the example image for this painting, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken off all the labels and top caps! Now my bottles were just pure green glass without other colours, which was a bit of a pity. But I was going to use them anyway.

It took some time until I finally had arranged 5 bottles for the study. I was trying to have interesting shapes as well as some mixing of greens from the transparency of bottles in front of others. I made an initial study in chalk pastel, A3 size. I tried not to overwork the sketch but leave the coloured paper to shine through. I found it difficult to mix the tones that I wanted from the selection of colours I had without smudging the pastels, but overall I like the sketch.

Then I slightly changed the position of the bottles to improve the composition for the watercolour study. I used Yarka artist watercolours in pans (24 selection) this time. These are less expensive than Winsor & Newton, but had good reviews and the colour chart showed that they were able to produce intense colours. Aside from the colour chart, it was the first time I used them. I think the study is nice and fresh and not overworked in an attempt to perfectionate the colours. Initially I wanted to paint the arrangement much larger, but then I deliberately chose a small size of A4 to stop me from fiddling with details. I made a second study because I found that the colours in the first looked like right out of the box, instead of mixed to the right tone. I used lamp light this time, because it was too dark outside for using daylight.

  

I had difficulties with mixing the colours. It’s not that I don’t know how to mix a certain tone, rather I don’t know how to handle the different component colours without making the pans all dirty. A question of where to mix and how to add colour with different brushes. This problem accompanies me from the beginning of the course. I still haven’t found a good work technique and I feel restricted and struggle with technical problems rather than getting into a flow of painting.

I was also struggling with the very analytical approach of identifying different tonal intensities and painting them directly, instead of building up the shapes and forms in layers of increasing intensity and varying tone. But I appreciate the greater freshness of the result when using the direct method.

I decided to to more studies of the arrangement, to practice colour mixing and treatment of the glass transparency.

Sketch 3 (34 x 48 cm)

The large format was made with lamp light again, but at night. I used a white styrofoam board as a background which helped to see the transparency of the bottles despite having only lamp light. The lamp is reflected as little circles on the bottles. I enjoyed working on the larger scale for the composition and drawing the shapes of the bottles. I also felt less inhibited to mix watercolours, which was why I had changed to a different set of materials, less expensive. My aim was to reduce the depiction of the reflections in the bottles and paint only the basic shaps of the green and brown bottles with a lighter and a darker tone, plus a pale tone for the reflections. I followed this approach but think the colours look not very nice. At one point I let go and got more courageous with the colours by using purple to darken the tone of the brown bottle to the right. I wasn’t very satisfied with the study overall. It was a step forward in that I managed to simplify. I had been very tired from not having slept well the night before, so gave up for that day.

Sketch 4 (28 x 38 cm)

The next morning I had another go. I wanted to try whether I got along better if I pre-mixed all the colours. My idea was to get to the point of working wet-in-wet to have the colours mix a bit by themselves and I thought I could more easily do this if I had my colours ready to use. I chose the smaller format as a compromise – more space to paint than A4, yet easier to fill because it needed less pre-mixed colour as the large format.

I stayed with the composition because I liked the shapes and negative spaces as well. Using the pre-mixed colours indeed helped to paint a bit more quickly and get into a flow. I began with the middle and the right bottles, these are still a bit fiddly, but then I let go with the right brown bottle and had the courage to paint wet in wet with enough water to mix colours on the paper. The result is so-so, but technically this painting was a step forward because there are more things happening to the colour by themselves, rather than me trying to produce all the effects deliberately.

I don’t think I need to pre-mix all the colours and tones, but it is definitely helpful to pre-mix the main colours for larger areas. In this case this was the rose background and the greyish table (actually black), plus the main green and brown tone. There’s still a long way to go but I feel like I’ve slightly moved into the right direction.

Exercise: Exploring greens outside

Due to weather conditions, painting outside was not an option, but I was able to make use of photographs I had made earlier for this exercise, with lots of green tones. The one I chose was a view on bushes and greenery at the Tudor park, a small recreational area in mid-town Manhattan.

I made two preparatory studies using up the remainders of the Winson & Newton watercolours from an earlier mixing exercise. In these two studies, I let myself more leeway to mix what I had at hand and did not follow the exact working procedure in stages outlined in the course instructions. My main aim was to get a bit of practice with mixing and to work relatively fast, not too much detail. I enlarged my source photo by looking on the TV screen and worked on roughly A3 format (30 x 40 cm). The second one is more truthful to my view, because I used an enlarged section of the photo on a wide-screen monitor.

 

The third study was made on the next day, using the normal sized, not enlarged picture on the computer screen and working from closer distance. This time I followed the instructions by dividing the work process into three phases, beginning with the lightest tones, proceeding to mid tones and then adding the darkest tones, although I sometimes deviated and began adding darker tones although still in stage two.

I see the three paintings as a series in which I understood the image better and better. I think the last one is most successful in conveying the different types of plants that were there. The first two studies are looser and less controlled. After the first two I thought it might be a good idea to do some detail studies of how the shapes of the leaves and grass are set off against their background. I did not make these studies because I feared of getting on an overly detailed and realistic track, but I tried to look more closely on the details while painting.

I think the painting is quite successful, although I’m not sure whether I want to pursue this style of painting. It feels a bit rigid and very analytical. I had a strong urge of reducing the complexity of the task. My idea was that by studying just a tiny section of the image I could learn how to give the medium more space to unfold chance colour variations. Instead I felt I was trying to depict too much on the relatively small sheet of paper.

 

Guided reflection

What is the strongest aspect? Is it just one area, or is it something about the appearance of the whole?

The strongest aspect for me is how the paintings seem to become more concentrated over the course of three attempts. In the final one, I succeeded in obtaining really dark and intense tones, and to cover the range from very light to very dark tonal values. I also managed to mix the more yellowish versus the blueish greens in different intensities. The mark-making became also more differentiated over the series, and I think the third study conveys quite well the characteristics of the different types of plants. So I’d say the strongest aspects relate to details as well as the overall impression from the combination of differently painted areas.

What are the weakest aspects, and how would you improve on these if you made a similar work in future?

I think there is still not enough differentiation of shapes in the greens to the middle left side. The dark tones that define the leaf shapes are lacking. If I were to do it again, I’d choose a larger format for the paper and take the time to make a preliminary study of the plant details, how the forms are set off against their background. I think the problem is one of missing negative shapes, caused by superficial observation on my part.

How has the practice in making the green grid helped you to identify and mix greens?

Mixing the green grid had helped me immensely as apreparation for painting the plants by making me realize the key dimensions of the green tones:
– Whether the green is more towards yellow or towards blue, or whether it wanders towards brown or black
– The importanse of the intensity of the tone, from pale to very intense – not necessarily dark.
During the actual painting process, I did not use the mixing chart, but rather the primary colour chart from which I could tell which green I wanted to start with and what type of colour I wanted to mix in.

Exercise: Building a picture

I had a difficult time finding the motif for this exercise. I searched multiple times through my photos without finding anything suitable. The task description suggested a landscape with some more than just trees and grass, for example houses, a path, or anything else to add interest. My photos are different. Typically I don’t not take pictures of “breathtaking views” because so often, a huge and open landscape scene that looks gorgeous in reality comes out flat and boring when photographed.

This experience shaped the way I make pictures. I typically take views of interesting structures and visual patterns, for example tree foliage, berries, wood and branches, ice on a river, things like that. I like my pictures and think they are a valuable resource, but it was quite difficult to find something that would work for this exercise, which asked for an open view on an interesting landscape. There are some series which contain more open views, for example my latest walk to the Carl Schurtz Park, or the visit to Brooklyn Cemetary, or older pictures from walks through the park close to my Berlin home. But for one reason or the other, none of the series seemed to include a picture I’d like to use as a source.

I was looking for a landscape with trees and bushes, and some interesting elements like houses or roads, and I wanted it to have an open view towards a distance. I tried alternatives:
– I did a Google image search. Ideas were to search generically for “landscape pictures”, then for certain regions that might have that kind of view, for example Dordogne in France, Cornwall in Britain, Vermont or the Hamptons in USA. But looking through the results, I did not feel comfortable with using someone else’s photograph, and I also found that these naïve searches yielded very clichéed images.
– I thought about using photographs from travel guides or geography books, but did not follow up the idea this time
– I thought about making new pictures, but this would have meant doing a winter landscape without any green. I didn’t find this suitable because after all this green mixing, I wanted to include at least a little bit of green in the painting.
– I seriously considered to use either the stairs in Carl Schurtz park or the greenery in Tudor park again, because I liked both photographs and felt they’d merit more in-depth treatment. With both I would have liked to do some detail sketches when I painted them for the earlier exercises. But then I thought it would be better to use a novel photograph and begin with a fresh mind.

In the end, I returned for a fourth time to search through my pictures and finally decided to use the images of the Akershus Fortress in Oslo, Norway, as my source for this exercise. I had made these pictures in 2012, when I visited the Emil Nolde exhibition in Oslo. I had even made a drawing on the spot of the fortress, although I did not find it very successful.

I have a set of eight photographs of the motif, and wanted to focus on two that represented my image idea best. It was a small stone paved path through a stone door, and I was fascinated by the different red and yellow tones of bushes against the neutral brown and grey tones of the fortress walls. The green grass also provided much contrast.

Some sketches

The first drawing represents the lower part of the scene, drawn on two sketchbook pages, which is an A3 format. The top of the tree and the fortress tower are cut off in the photo I used. I wasn’t aware of it while drawing, but then realized this might work as a composition as well, if I’d decide not to include the complete tree and the fortress tower. I had been unsure about this, because tree and tower are high elements which would suggest a square or portrait format. I suspected this wouldn’t work too well because the main elements were in a triangle to the lower right, and the upper left all empty, just sky.

Unfortunately, it was a very gray day and the sky was just a pale light tone. So I thought it might work well to cut off and emphasize the stone building and the colourful bushes to the right, rather than having much empty space in the painting.

The second sketch was a colour study of the left outer fortress wall, made with chalk pastel on a single sketchbook page. I wanted to study the dark stones set off from the lighter wall joints. I included the foreground grass and some buildings in the background. I think the most successful elements in this sketch are the small trees in the left background, because of their nice colour blending from orange to green into dark brown. While I like the overall energy of the sketch, I’m less satisfied with the wall, because it looks a bit flat.

Then I made some smaller detail studies with 4B pencil of a section of the wall, the roof and the second passway in the background. While sketching, I kept asking myself what kind of study would help me with the final drawing. Somehow I’d have preferred to do watercolour detail studies over sketches with dry media, to get more practice with watercolour mark making and mixing colours. Nevertheless I did another pencil study of the large tree, because I thought this was what instructions demanded. At this point I was at odds with task instructions which stated to do drawings where I saw more benefit in watercolour sketches. Maybe in the future I shall do both to satisfy my preferences.

I also made a pencil sketch of the whole tree, another important element of my scene.

I reflected which other elements were relevant to study and decided on the colourful bushes. The picture is not very detailed here, there are no fine structures, instead I think that the intensity of the red, yellow, brown and green colours before the paler stone colours is what is important. So I did a study of those bushes using coloured pencil. At one point I decided to dissolve them using water, which was a good decision because it brought out the colours nicely and let the white paper background disappear.

Decisions for the final painting

Picture elements
Looking at my sketches and the photo source, I think my main picture elements are
– The stone path
– The colourful bushes to the right
– The central door and its smaller corresponding door in the background
– The huge tree
– The monumental stone walls

Composition
I felt quite comfortable with cropping the top of the tree and leaving out the tower in my first drawing. On the other hand, this left out some interesting elements. The background to the left of the left stone wall is the Oslo port which might give more depth to the whole scene. But If I include so much of the scene, the colourful bushes would occupy only a relatively small proportion of the sheet. I wasn’t not sure whether I wanted this, because those colours had fascinated me in the first place.

I was still undecided about the picture format: Landscape, portrait or square. I was also undecided about how much of the scene I want to include: The entire scene or just the central section with the stone doorway, some stone walls around, part of the tree and those bushes. I hoped for the compositional sketches to help with these decisions. I made two compositional sketches in my sketchbook, extending my main photo to the sides using information from additional sources. The resulting format was roughly a square, maybe a bit more landscape than portrait.

Finally I made a detail sketch of the top of the fortress tower with the adjacent stone wall to study the strongly angled perspective lines.

  

Colour decisions
I made a small sketch to try out the main colours: The greens of the large tree, the red and yellows of the bushes, and the browns and greys of the building and the paved way. I annotated the colours that went into these mixes. I found my colours too pale but thought it would be easier to decide on the right colour mix when I was working on the actual painting.

 

Exercise: Painting with prepared elements

I started on a size of 34 x 48 cm, slightly larger than A3, in a landscape orientation. I tried to sketch my scene, but this proved difficult. This was probably because I tried to integrate information from different sources which resulted in loss of orientation. After three tries where either the top of the paper was too short or the sides left too much blank, I went back to the instructions and realized I hadn’t made the integrative drawing. So I made this on a sheet of grey paper, began relatively small in the middle and managed to get all my desired elements onto it. Surprise, the result was a portrait format, with the height slightly larger than the width.

I searched through my watercolour papers and luckily I had a large format which fitted these dimensions, size 35 x 50 cm. It was still difficult to get the underline sketch of the composition onto the paper because of the different sources to integrate, but this time it worked.

I began with the lightest colours and proceeded to the darker tones as suggested, but at several points I worked wet in wet to mix colour on the paper rather than on the pallet because the pre-mixed tone didn’t fit and I wanted to correct. I also wanted to make use of the mediums flow to achieve a more impressionistic and less detailed effect.

Overall, I wasn’t really comfortable working with the process outlined in the course materials. I generally like structured approaches and in earlier exercises often felt that I needed some preparatory studies before tackling the final painting. But somehow I wasn’t at ease with the suggested steps and might have chosen different types of studies. In particular, I missed detail studies of selected elements to try out mark making and colour mixes. On the other hand, I wanted to follow instructions just to see how I would get along and what would be the outcome. Secretly I suspect that the more successful elements of the painting are those where I went beyond instructions, for example by painting the colourful bushes wet-in-wet and alternating between light and dark colours, instead of following the rule of sequence from light to dark with letting each layer dry before applying the next.

I think what will work for me is trying out how I get along by following instructions, but also experiment with doing things differently and breaking rules.

Guided reflections

Have you kept the spontaneity of the drawing or have you created a new image based on the first drawing?

I think the spontaneity of the initial drawing is lost. In the final watercolour, I created a different type of image of the same motif. I think my main problem was inhibition to paint generously because I was concerned about details. The very controlled approach wasn’t supportive for taking risks. It was only at the end that I dared to do some more generous washes and mixes directly on the paper, which I feel give the painting a bit more spontaneity and freshness.

What did you learn in the preparatory drawings?

I think they were valuable as general preparation because I looked closely at some details of my scene.

How were the drawings useful (or otherwise) in preparing for your final painting?

I think a particularly useful drawing was the final compositional drawing, because it helped me to integrate my different source pictures and make the right choice of format for the paper size.

Otherwise I feel that I’d have benefitted from doing detail watercolour sketches, rather than drawing with a pencil, because this would have given practice in mixing the colours and inventing marks to represent textures like stone walls or bushes.

Actually my setting was a bit different from what the instructions implied, because I did not work in a real landscape but from a set of photos. So maybe the greatest advantage of preparatory drawings may have been the help in selecting what is essential about a landscape, but this didn’t apply to my situation. My photos already represented a selection of what I had found interesting about the view at the time.

Did you feel that your composition was successful or not? Say why that is.

Yes, I think the final composition is successful. I like the strong perspective effect of the pathway, and think I managed to capture how impressive the huge walls of the fortress were. I had feared the almost square format would result in too much unused space in the upper left, but looking at the picture I think this is not a problem in the composition. It rather has an effect of opening up the scene which I find beneficial for the painting.

How successful were the colours and the mixing that you practiced then used?

I did not make much use of my prepared mixes. At the beginning of the painting I tried to premix all the colours on the palette before putting them on the paper, but then I realized that the tones I wanted were indeed mostly grey-brown and somehow mudded, so I began mixing all kinds of remnant pigment from the palette into each new brushstroke, and this worked better for me.

How successful are the tonal arrangements in your painting?

I think the tonal arrangement of the painting, understood as the range of tonal values from very light to very dark, works ok in the painting. A particular difficulty arose of the different light situations in my photo sources, because some were quite light and others quite dark overall. When combining pictorial information from these different sources, I tried to take care that my painting remained balanced overall, and I think this was successful. I aimed at correspondence to the light situation of the scene, rather trying to create a dramatic effect. There would certainly the potential to make the painting more impressive by increasing colour values.

What is your assessment of the value of the detail that you have included?

While painting I felt that I was too much oriented towards detail and would have preferred to work more generously and boldly. Looking at the finished painting, I think the level of detail is acceptable, although I’m not really satisfied. What works well is the distant background to the left, where tiny marks are somehow convincing.

I think there is a tendency of too much detail in the middle ground, for example the stone shapes of the two doorways or the many leaves of the tree. By contrast, I was less detailed in the foreground. Probably I should have done the opposite – details in the foreground, more generous approach in the middle ground.

I found deciding on the level of detail quite difficult. My aim would be to study the elements closely and understand the visual pattern, but then convert it into a generous representational shortcut rather than trying to accurately paint all the details. This will probably remain an important topic for a while.

What have you learned overall and what might you do differently another time?

Since I did not work outside but from photos, the exercise has made me more aware about the type of photos I will need when using photos as a source. This should be a set of photos that comprise the entire scene plus close-ups of relevant elements.

It’s difficult to exactly specify what I have learned, in the sense that I after the exercise I can do things which I couldn’t do before. It rather feels like valuable practice with one particular approach, a learning experience which might guide how I’ll approach future paintings. I think I’d like to maintain a structured approach, but execute some steps differently. In particular, I’d include detail studies using watercolours, rather than just drawing the relevant elements. On the other hand, I think I’d follow the process one more time to see how it works when I try to paint a landscape outside.

For this particular painting, I think I’d have needed some studies on the perspective. It was quite late while painting that I realized that I had to include perspective lines in the stone walls of the fortress. I did my best but I think there are some errors. It may have to do with using several photos which all had slightly different viewpoints, with differently angled receding lines. By studying this, I might have been better prepared to integrate these into a coherent whole.

How has this exercise helped you to select the right subject for you?

This question is difficult to answer because the exercise was done after the subject had been chosen. Drawing elements might be helpful in finding the focus of a painting, in a situation where a scene is overwhelmingly complex. In my case, I had chosen my photos and used the drawings as detail studies of elements.

My future choice of subject will most probably be guided by interest and fascination and a feeling of beauty that I’d like to capture in a painting. Then I’d adapt the process to match my aims for the painting. I’m not sure about the role of this exercise when it comes to choosing a subject.

Has this process helped you to see picture elements more clearly?

I’m not sure. I certainly looked closer at the elements I chose for detail studies. But I felt hindered by having to use a drawing medium rather than a brush to translate what I saw into a sketch. When it came to making the final painting, I was still without preparation for the visual language to use with watercolours.