How to Paint a Beautiful Old English Cottage!

Well, here is the photo that we will be referring to in our new painting project.

Everyone drew it up at home on a 16x20 inch canvas board.  I pencilled in a box in which I wanted the main house to go on the canvas first, as this will be the focal point of our painting.

So today we started on the sky.  I created a mix of Tasman Blue and white on my palette, together with a large blob of just white.  By scooping alternate brush-loads of blue and white and dabbing them on to the board, it is a quick way of making a cloudy sky.  Just make sure the blue gets lighter towards the horizon and feather off the colours into each other very lightly with a soft brush.

For the big background tree on the right, I put a small amount of Scarlet into the blue to make a slightly purple colour.  We want that tree to blend into the sky to give it distance.  I used a No.6 round brush to dab lightly into the wet sky.  By adding a little Lemon Yellow into the mix, we began work on the background trees.  As we move forward, we will introduce stronger colours and stronger tones but this is a good day's work for now.