Friday, January 30, 2009




Landscape study near the coastal farming town of Pescadero, California. Rough sketch to start with, pencil layout, washes and general steps to the finished painting. The sun went down fast and I darkened the foreground towards the end. Gouache & mostly watercolors.

22 comments:

Matthew Scheuerman said...

Aweome process. I love the colors and the suggestion of the fence. Thumbs looked great too.

Julia Lundman said...

Just curious to know what paper you are using to paint on. I have found gouache really ripples the paper. Is it more stable when you tape the edges?

Unknown said...

Amazing. Really.
It's really impressive to see how you can block the whole composition in such a small amount of strokes…

LuisNCT said...

Great. It has a lot of mood and profundity feeling

E.Tiemens said...

The paper I used for this painting is Fabriano's Artistico water color block - traditional white - 100% cotton 9" x 12". (Cold Pressed)

-This is really helpful as it does not buckle much. You can also try illustration board for heavier gouache too.

As a note the the smaller thumbnail images are the actual painting in progress. The painting is 95% transparent watercolors from M.Graham.

-Erik

Julia Lundman said...

Thank you!

Scott Daly said...

Beautiful work Erik. I'm excited to check out you're DVD.

A. Riabovitchev said...

Really Beautiful!

Kinman said...

Wow.. you made it look waay better than real life!

Unknown said...

Thank you for posting the process - very insightful.

Jesse Lee said...

this is gorgeous!....are you doing any more workshops in the near future?

Mattia Nelli said...

Great, amazing colors! I love to see the process, and thank you for including the picture with the thumbnails.

Ty Carter said...

This turned out very nice!

chao lin said...

I have been loving your stuff since the star wars trilogy. This landscape This is truly inspiring. Thank you so much too for posting the progress

Jared Shear said...

Beautiful piece!....thank you for sharing insights into your process.

Do you take these sketches further working them up into larger studio pieces? Did your Totoro Forest project image evolve out of a series of sketches like these?

Brandon said...

WOW that really is gorgeous. I am at awe!
i dont even know what that means but i am.

E.Tiemens said...

Hi Jared,

It is an interesting question because for the totoro forest painting I did not do a watercolor/gouache sketch for that piece, but rather worked a few brief pencil sketches and made a tempera underpainting with monochromatic browns, black and white. I then glazed oils over that.

For the commission piece I did work on the three comps and the client picked the valley version. I printed that out with some grid marks and used that as a guide for the 60x45 inch oil painting on linen. So it can vary, but always a good idea to try it out small, and if it works, it usually holds well at the larger scale.

-Erik

benjaminlois said...

hi from Spain!! really good work!! like it very very much!! really you have that talent that makes your work special!!

Unknown said...

Absolutely wonderful!!! Stunning!

RUDHI RĂ¼scher said...

Magician you! Greetings from Austria:)

Mike Thomas said...

Wow, this is beautiful. You seem to have gone well outside your normal palette for this. Sort of a "palette cleanser" (couldn't help myself).

Mongsub Song said...

SIMPLEY AWESOME.. LOVE THE COMPOSITION AND COLOR.. AND ALL..
AWESOME JOB~! ^^