Thursday, September 26, 2013

Autumn Dusting - Nearly Finished

Autumn Dusting- oil on canvas 36" x 60" by Greg Newbold
Just about finished with this big Mount Olympus painting. A few more adjustments here and there and I will call it done. This is the largest oil painting I have done to date and I am pretty pleased with it. It's interesting to paint this large and to see what tendencies are accentuated in the process of scaling up from small work. One thing that for sure seems to be coming through is my desire to stylize shapes. I found myself wanting to let the large planes rule and to eliminate non essential detail. For instance, I wanted to let the majesty of the mountain dominate, so I eliminated the entire neighborhood of houses that crouches on the foothills. I felt that the myriad shapes and roof lines were just distracting to the overall statement so, poof, they are gone. It's a better painting as a result. Now to order up a frame.

See the study and block in for this painting here

6 comments:

Mike Blake Studio said...

I can't help, but say how ridiculously amazing this is. You are obviously getting the hang of doing FineArt/ frame-able Illustrations. The way you are heading kind of reminds me of Stephen Morath's paintings (especially my favorite painting of his "autumn by the spanish peaks")! I love exaggeration and realistic stylization, which you and stephen are very good at!

Unknown said...

Thanks Mike. It's a challenge to strike a balance between what I have been doing in illustration for twenty years, and what I want to try to do in gallery work. It feels like they are merging closer together though.

Brad Teare said...

Really beautiful, Greg.

Unknown said...

Thanks Brad- I appreciate the approval from you.

Lael Henderson said...

I like this a lot too! congrats on painting something this large. The biggest I've ever done is only a little over half that size. Again, very nice job!

Unknown said...

Thanks Lael. I expect that there will be a lot more large canvases on the horizon for me. It has been fun.