Painting a Grand Adventure - Part 2

Continuing work on this large 40" x 30" painting titled A Grand Adventure featuring

a de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver. The Preparation

The next step I needed to do was to prepare the large panel with gesso. After several coats of gesso and sanding, I then worked on the underpainting. I brushed on an acrylic texture of yellow ochre with Golden paints.

After the underpainting was fully dry, I used a digital projector to project my digital composition (lines only, and without the colors) onto the panel.

I then started tracing my projected art onto the panel with a water-soluble pencil.

After that tedious process was finished, it turns out like below.

Painting the Sky

Using mixtures of Cerulean Blue, Chromium, Ultramarine Blue, and Titanium White, I began to block in the blue sky and clouds above the mountains and plane.

My pallet for the sky and clouds

Painting the Mountains

After building the basic structure of the clouds, I then move on to work on blocking in the mountains.

Building up the tones of the rocky and snowy areas of the steep mountain peaks.

As I go, I'm further refining the light and shadow areas of these rugged steep peaks.

I'm working back and forth around the tops of the mountains and also shaping up the clouds as well, especially where the clouds meet the top edges of the mountains.

More work on the distant mountain areas that are under the clouds on the left-hand side of the painting. Because they are practically in fog and snow, parts of those mountains on the left don't get as much sunlight, in contrast to the peaks on the right side of the painting.

Here, I'm adding the cracks and crevices in the rock face.

Nearly done with these peaks.

I've reshaped the clouds a bit more. I still have more work to do on them. The sky is nearly 95% done.

You can see the progress of Parts 1 & 2 of this painting in this video: