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branches. Leave some of the sky showing through at the top of the trees where the paint is thinner. Be sure to keep your brush dry to give added texture to the foliage. The texture of the canvas will also add texture and interest to the foliage. Highlights and foliage that overlaps the barn will be painted after the barn.
Barn: Basecoat in the barn with mix of Nimbus Grey, Burnt Umber and a touch of Prussian Blue Hue with a #8 flat brush. Pull strokes vertically from top to bottom with a dry brush to help create the texture of old wood. Re-establish the window and door openings with Raw Umber and a touch of Prussian Blue Hue. Begin highlights on front of barn with Nimbus
Grey dry brush. Add accents on some boards with Burnt Sienna. Continue to add Nimbus Grey highlights at top of door opening and left lower front. Detail around top windows and top front edge of left roof line with Nimbus Grey. Left side of roof edge is darker. Darken inside of window and door openings, if needed, with Raw Umber plus touch of Prussian Blue Hue. Dry-brush a slight light area inside door opening on left with dirty brush of gray mix. Accent color on right inside of door opening is Dioxazine Purple.
Foreground: Using a mix of Olive Green plus a touch of Brilliant Green, stipple or scrub some grasses near the top of the landscape near the left side of barn. As you move further away from the door opening, use less Brilliant Green and
pick up the browns on your palette. You can use the tones background as a base for the grasses as well. I used very little paint on my brush and scrubbed paint on rather than stroking it on. Paint in the main stems for the ironweed flowers with Olive Green plus Burnt Umber. Use a liner brush with a heavier paint application. Add random grasses with liner brush using
a mix of Olive Green, Raw Sienna, Turners Yellow and Burnt Sienna. Vary the sizes of the grasses. The shorter grasses
near the base of the barn are Raw Sienna with touches of Warm White and/or Turners Yellow. The grasses are painted
in clumps and “drifts” rather than isolated stems. Keep them impressionistic. You can tone them down and make less prominent by dry-brushing background colors over them, especially at the base if needed.
Ironwood Flowers: Pounce clusters of flowers on starting with Purple Madder. Highlight tops of clusters with Amethyst and then Amethyst plus Warm White. Shade bottom of flowers with stipple of Dioxazine Purple. The flowers behind the main groupings are just a suggestion of color with Purple Madder. Again, paint these in drifts of color, some clusters touching, some as random single flowers.
FINISHING
Pull some foliage from trees and vines over the front of the barn using the colors of the trees. Reassess all of the foliage, making sure you have dark areas to show depth in the trees. Reinforce highlights where needed. Strengthen Nimbus Grey highlights on barn boards if needed. Dry thoroughly. Varnish with Jo Sonja’s Satin Varnish.
TheDecorativePainter • WINTER 2018 61