Landscape oil paintings
To paint my landscape oil paintings, and also other subjects, I use a technique that is called "a velature" in Italian, this means that I paint multiple layers of transparent color, one on the other.
This way the colors are brighter because they are transparent in more layers.
I mix all the colors with Windsor & Newton's Liquin that helps the colors dry faster.
I use it in place of lindseed oil. When it dries it gets very hard and keeps the colors from cracking. This thing sometimes happens in oil painting, the surface of the color can appear dry but actually inside it can be still fresh and so, when you paint on a color that is not perfectly dry, it can crack.
I put a coat and let it dry, then another coat and so on until I reach the result I want.
This tecnique is useful also to create seascape paintings, the water of the sea is brighter and more realistic with this method.
In my landscapes I begin by painting the background, then I go on creating the foreground. This makes my process to paint easier, this way when I paint the foreground I can use the color in a more or less transparent way because under I have already a color, I can take advantage of the color of the background and create different nuances putting another transparent color over.
The things far away, on the horizon, should have colder colors, the things nearer should be painted with warmer colors, infact the warm colors help place the accent on an element of the painting.
Between
every coat, before painting, it's useful to apply some Liquin (or oil and
turpentine, if you prefer) on the canvas, this way, when you paint, the colors run and can be blended easily.
I live in Italy, in the Mediterranean Sea, I am lucky to reproduce the beautiful landscapes we have.