The next step was to find references for everything. I don’t know everything, and even if I think I know something, I do some research about it.
Making a Winter Landscape
Jean-Baptiste Caillet, a student at ArtFx, gladly broke down his colorful and serene winter landscape scene made with Maya, Arnold and Substance Designer.
Hi! My name is Jean-Baptiste Caillet, I’m 21, and I’m a 3rd year CG & VFX Student at ArtFX (a school of VFX, CG, 3D Animation and Video Games) based in Montpellier, France.
My interest in photography and video games started when I was 12 and over the years evolved and included Digital Painting, CG and VFX images/videos. Thanks to that, I ended up at ArtFX at 18 years old.
Nowadays, I love working on environments and use any tool needed to achieve my goal. Sometimes I want to work on Concept Art by imagining different worlds, mainly 2D, and other times I want to create full 3D environments as I did with Peaceful Morning.
Sketch
Every project starts with a sketch!
So I did some thumbnail sketches, which were very rough, barely understandable. Most of the time, I like to start with something quite abstract, and then I try to understand what I drew, what it could be. It’s funny because everyone will see something completely different as it’s just some random shapes which can evoke anything. For you, this shape could be a spaceship, for me it could be a rock, for someone else it would be a character. It doesn’t matter, because you will see what you want in this shape, and you don’t have to force yourself, it comes naturally.
The goal at this point is not to draw a beautiful image with a lot of details everywhere, but to quickly represent and illustrate what’s on your mind, a basic idea. That’s it!
To do so, I just focus on the dynamics of the picture, the composition, and the main shapes. That’s why rough drawings are very powerful, because you will just focus on what is needed, and you will leave behind what isn’t. If your image works with simples shapes, it will work when you add complexity to the shapes and detail. But the opposite isn’t true.
After those ugly sketches are done, I pick one, the one I will work on until the end. At that stage, the only thing I knew was the following: I want to have snowy hills because I love how the light reacts to it, how it goes through it, the great colors it creates and this material also creates a very calm mood, I believe. I also wanted to have some kind of dwelling (it could have been a castle, an abandoned wooden house, a farm, etc. I wasn’t sure about it, at that point) and a lake.
Winter Landscape in Oils
Join us in the quiet, calm winter streets of St Ives and paint like an impressionist. Learn to build lusciously layered oil paintings in a single sitting.
Make the most of the mild, sunny climate of St Ives this winter on this course led by artist Andrew Barrowman. Due to its southerly latitude and influence of the Gulf Stream, St Ives has a mild and sunny climate all year round. Enjoy exploring the quiet, calm cobbles and coastal paths of the town in wintertime, making the most of this peaceful time of year.
Working both outside and in our historic Porthmeor Studios, you’ll spend time building sketches, enhancing your focus on your subject and discovering the hidden glimpses that reveal themselves the longer you look. Experiment with alternative materials – watercolour, pastel and coloured pencil – to capture strong lines, subtle flickers of light and vibrant tone. You’ll find that unlike a photograph, these sketches become a piece of the place and process, helping you savour that inspiration from home or the studio.
Learn how the shades and tones of winter can be captured in oil and see how the cooler palettes of this season can create a particular atmosphere. You’ll gain insight into oil painting techniques that enable you to work faster, more instinctively and bring hidden depth to your paintings. One of these is working alla prima, or wet-on-wet. It can be a tricky technique to master, Andrew shows you how to approach it with confidence and control, teaching you strategies for how to create impasto layers without your colours becoming muddy.
Spend a revelatory few days working with landscape to bring vibrancy and focus into your practice, creating paintings that don’t just decorate, but captivate.
Day to day plan
Day 1
In the morning, you will spend some time outside. Back in the studios in the afternoon, we’ll develop some monochromatic oil studies using work from the sketches and create another alla prima painting honing in on subject and tone..
Day 2
In the morning, we’ll walk from the studios to the harbour, sketching with oil pastels, watercolour and coloured pencils in our sketchbooks.
In the afternoon, we will begin with some colour mixing exercises using a three colour palette. Utilising the location sketches, we will begin an alla prima painting in oils. This will be on a white panel in a very limited palette, to explore the impact of a few colours on the atmosphere of a painting.
Day 3
Working in the studio we will look at the paintings from the previous days and choose 1 or 2 to develop further. We will look at how ‘cooler’ colours for winter landscape painting and a limited palette work to unify a painting. There will be some colour mixing to explore complimentary colours and their use in a painting – helping bring it to life.
What you will learn
- Techniques for working en plein air
- How to work quickly in oils using the alla prima technique.
- How and why to use ground colours in your painting.
- How to make sketches using different materials to use as resources in the studio in place of photographs.
- How to establish and capture a subject using observational skills.
Whatever your skill or experience in oils, this course offers an instinctive and atmospheric way to engage with landscape. In particular the challenges of boats and water. We will be working outside so be prepared for changes in weather and wrap up warm!
