October 31, 2014

Clayton works on a variety of paintings every day, in part due to the different lighting of landscapes and in part because one can only apply so much oil paint before it needs to dry.  One of his current studies is a landscape depicting the warmth of early morning light on a frosty morning.  As he paints Clayton writes down what he has done: the colors and how much of each he used in the hillside and the woods; the difference from fore to background; the layers he has used to achieve a color harmony in the painting; what he has done to depict the effects of light in the scene.  In this specific painting there is a horse with a blanket in the foreground.  He noted that he used ultramarine of different thicknesses to portray the blue blanket and its folds, and then added cerulean blue where the blanket was lit by the sun.  By keeping a log, Clayton can later compare his studies to see what has worked best to depict the desired effect.