I spent most of this week working on my snowstorm painting.
Once I was freed from my masking tape hell hole, I moved onto using masking fluid for the snowfall. It was a bit hard to wrap my head around, but my process would be the following:
Splatter masking fluid all over the page
Paint over the unmasked section on the top half with burnt umber and ultramarine blue, using more blue as I went further into the distance to convey atmospheric depth
Remove the masking tape and splatter more masking fluid so that the houses would also be obscured by snowfall
Proceed to the rest of the painting
This how the painting looked once I removed the masking tape. I decided to eventually blend the houses into the rest of the painting but I also really like how crisp it looked at this point. In the future, I’d like to try playing with similar textures in other paintings.
I proceeded to blend the houses in the background to create depth and started to add details to the foreground.
Annoyingly, I didn’t document the rest of the painting enough, but to sum up the rest of my work:
I added in more details to the foreground
I used an abstract blooming effect for the tree on the right
I slashed watercolour in the corners to create a vignette effect
I removed the masking fluid and splattered some white ink on top
Now, I just need to go back in with various materials to adjust the tones of the painting. I primarily want to focus on lighting up some of the houses again (by dabbing with a tissue, using masking fluid and maybe sandpaper).
Bibliography
The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution, dir. by Clare Beavan (Fresh One Productions, 2013).