Painting process | Where the Light Leads; Through the Paddies
This is the process for my painting of Ninh Binh, Vietnam.
I spent 6 weeks in Vietnam this year and the dramatic karst mountain landscape and rice paddies were breathtaking.
I encountered this mesmerising scene with the eerie orange pollution-tinged sunset while cycling out to dinner as the fireflies were emerging around me. It felt beautiful but strangely unsettling. But, the distant man in blue was reassuringly leading the way.
I wanted to exaggerate this unsettling glow in my painting, losing the edge of the mountain into the sky and capturing the reflection on the water, path and glowing off the man’s hat so you can really feel that eerie, hazy effect.
Preliminary sketches and studies
I did a LOT of preliminary work for this painting! I was pushing myself to simplify the values (how many shades of light and dark) and commit to the storytelling of the scene. I used all of these sketches to inform the final painting.
I settled on the composition very quickly, using the golden ratio to place the objects in the scene. These are my initial thumbnail sketches that I used to simplify the values. The little squares correspond to a shade of grey in the sketches. It’s amazing to see how you can convey such a complex scene with so few shades of dark and light.
Next, I did a larger black and white oil sketch bringing together the design decisions I made for the painting. I focused on 5 values and started resolving the edges between shapes. The figure is my focal point and all of my decisions need to be engineered towards this goal.
I then painted a little colour study for this painting. I’ve taken my decisions from my black and white studies into this painting to check the success of the piece alongside colour choices.
I then did another sketch, this time with more detail and cooler greens. As a result, this sketch is missing the orange glow in the rice paddies that the previous sketch had.
And finally, this was my last sketch! In this one, I resolved the colours in the sky and the effect of the water. I also decided on the chroma of the man’s blue shirt to make him stand out amongst the greens.
Below is a timelapse I filmed of my final oil study of the scene before I started the work on canvas.
The painting process
I primed the canvas with gesso painted in a dynamic circular motion to create movement and energy that comes through in the final piece. I chose to tone the canvas in a pale orange colour in order to imbue the entire painting with the sunset colouring. I’ve then drawn out the scene based on the shapes I designed in my preliminary sketches. The grid lines are along the golden ratio divisions to help guide me in my composition.
This is the first layer of paint down. I’ve followed the values and colours from my initial studies and painted the sky in small vertical strokes of broken colour.
Here I’ve started to paint in the man pushing his bicycle - but I’ve accidentally painted him way too large! This is because the horizon line isn’t quite in the right spot which threw off the measurements. A good first go but it definitely needed major adjustments!
Here, I’ve adjusted the horizon line and repainted the man to the correct size. I’ve also painted in all the detail of the reeds and leaves on the right hand side of the piece. I ended up adding a thin dark glaze over this part to pare back the detail so it wasn’t distracting from the man as the focal point.
While adding another layer to the sky and water, I’ve chosen to paint over the reeds on the left so I can come back in to give them movement and a sense of their shape without painting each one individually. Here, I’ve also been perfecting the green of the rice paddies and the perspective leading us into the scene.
Almost finished! I’ve refined and added light holes through the reeds in the bottom left and worked on getting the path to look muddy with countless bicycle tracks through it. I’ve also worked on the sunlit edge of the mountains so it feels as if they are dissolving into the orange light - and yet, I also had to maintain their form and solidity so they look like rocky mountains.
Finished!
“Where the Light Leads; Through the Paddies”, 76x51cm, oil on canvas.
In the final touches I added a thin glaze of orange into the highlights on the rice paddies, mountains, on the reeds and leaves and a glow on the man’s hat to really push the eerie light blanketing the whole scene.
Details
Here you can see the detail on the man pushing his bicycle, leading our way safely along the path. If you look closely you’ll see the subtle orange glow around his hat.
This is a close-up of the reeds and leaves on the right hand corner. I really enjoyed layering the different greens to achieve that lush feeling of wild vegetation without over-done precision.
And here is the sun! From this photo you can see how I’ve layered the paint in the sky and edge of the mountain, with thick paint on top for the intensity of the sunset.
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