Ice Blue Mountains Fantasy Landscape

by Edward McNaught-Davis

Title

Ice Blue Mountains Fantasy Landscape

Artist

Edward McNaught-Davis

Medium

Painting - Acrylic On Canvas

Description

My ice blue mountains fantasy landscape was painted with many burnishes of professional quality acrylic paint to provide depth and luminosity. The mountains were built up in multiple layers of thin blue transparent glazes and which have an interesting transparency showing a depth of individual brush strokes below the top layers.

Although the scene is fictitious I made it look as though it could be real with lots of crags, nooks and crannies.

My palette was purposely limited to just blue and white paint for this dreamy mountain landscape. I used three different types of blue paint from tubes in order to get different shades and tints. The three blue colours were Ultramarine, Cobalt and Cerulean. I could have made these colours myself from a primary blue but I wanted colour consistency as a base line.

For the sky, I added a small quantity of black pigment to obtain a midnight blue colouring. Once this was dry it looked rather bland and so I added tiny brush marks of bluish white paint rather like pin pricks to resemble stars. But they are not prominent and you do not have to notice them.

Ice blue mountains took about 100 hours to complete from start to finish. Much of this time was waiting for the glazes to dry sufficiently for the next layer to be applied on top. No acrylic additives were used - just water. The ground used was a specially prepared panel in gesso.

I painted it while I was learning how to master painting with long handled brushes. The real skill came into being by using long handled brushes and holding them right at their ends (ie the other end from the brush end). This technique is very difficult to master but once achieved it does afford better brush control with regards to flexibility of movement.

I kept the painting for a while then decided to varnish it and subsequently exhibit it. It was then sold to a private art collector although I retained its copyright in order to make and sell reproduction prints from a high quality photographic image of ice blue mountains fantasy landscape.

Uploaded

March 16th, 2016

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