My Notes:    I really love being able to post new demos every so often on my website. It feels really wonderful to have an easy way to share the joy and learning experience that I get for myself when I paint out of doors, on site "en plein air".  I changed my life and my paintings so much when I began working en plein air. 
I am grateful. I hope you'll enjoy seeing what inspired and motivated me to do this painting.  If you click on the pics of the painting in progress, they should get big enough to see the details.  
Wishing you great joy and happy painting!  Karen

Demonstration in oil on linen panel;  "The Contessa's Olives"    6x10 inches  © 2007
Tuscany Italy June 2007 at the property LeLodole, a working olive farm owned by The Contessa Giussepina Radicatti di Brozolo Hamilton.

My Inspiration: 
I found this vantage point on the workshop's property after about a 10 minute walk from our farmhouse. We were staying in the house just on the other side of these houses on the hill. This farm, Le Lodole is a working olive farm that has been in the Contessa's family for centuries. 

I was so mesmerized by the patterns of silvery olive trees and the bright yellow greens of the rows of grape vines to their right. Really it's a huge scene and I knew it could be disaster if I didn't simplify those patterns. So my goal - capture the natural path that the olives and the grapes provided and have a huge payoff at the focal point of the Contessa's house.  

The Lay In: I was working on an oil primed linen board that I had custom cut to a 6inch by 10 inch size just for this trip. This was our second time at this property and I remembered how wonderful it was to have some oblong sizes of canvas to use from last year's trip.  Using a big brush and thinned paint on a very lightly toned panel, I laid in the general design of the sweeping rows of olive trees (or bushes) and the  leading grape vines. I was trying to make sure I remembered to simplify...thus I left out the poppies in the front. They would have to wait for the next painting.  I wanted to be sure to make my composition interesting by staying "off center" with the 4 important parts of this paintings.  In simplified terms there are the 1.Oilive Trees - bottom left, 2. Grape Vines - bottom right, 3. House grouping - top left and 4. Distant Tree grouping - top left.  Making those elements of uneven proportion was an important part of my plan.

My Pallet: I was using my Open Box M field easel - a perfect companion to trips that require hiking and carrying of luggage up and down hills. It's small, but provides just enough mixing area for me. This day I had these colors on my pallet:

Starting bottom left going clockwise:
Manganese Blue Hue/Windsor Newton, Sap Green/ Windsor Newton, French Ultramarine Blue/Windsor Newton/ Permanent Rose/ Windsor Newton, Yellow Ochre Light/ Windsor Newton, Cadmium Yellow Light / Gamblin, Cadmium Orange/ Gamblin, Left over Gray then finally Blue Black/ Windsor Newton. All of the Windsor Newton colors are the Artist Oil Colors - which are the professional grade of Windsor Newton.  I also added Windsor Newton Titanium White later.  I was using just a bit of mineral spirits for thinning, no medium and filbert bristle brushes size 4 to 10.

Composition Check:

After standing back from my easel to take a quick check of my composition to make sure I was pleased. I continued solidifying the composition with the darks.

Putting in the darks:  I laid in the darks, making sure to keep it simple - just some dark directional masses and notes for where the house grouping was as well as the other 3 major masses. 

The Olives:  Now that I had some of the darks in, I wanted to make sure I got started on that wonderful silvery green color of the olive trees. It had been the strangest color to mix, one that we don't see often painting at home in Charleston or in the Bahamas. Silvery Green - it took some mixing to get to a color that I thought was close to it. I like to pre-mix on my pallet before I put a lot of color on the canvas, especially when I'm in unfamiliar territory (like olive groves).  I used some sap green and cooled it with the permanent rose and white then added back some blue into it.  The hues in the olives and the grapes were like night and day - the olives very cool and the grapes were a hot yellowish warm green. 

The House: Now I was ready to lay in the house. It would be the "payoff" or focal point of the painting...with all those wonderful rows of olives and grapes leading me right to it. So I used some of the cad orange and blue to make a dark orange tile roof. Just one stroke on that roof. I really don't like to have ten million little tiles showing in my paintings. I know they are there, but when I glance or squint at the house in the landscape it's really just a blur of red on the top with a darker shadow under the eves.  Then I used a bit of the yellow ochre, cadmium yellow and white to lay in the body of the building in as few strokes as possible. 

Tree Holes: I always love this part where I "dot" in the tree holes. Strategically placed, they provide some relief and add depth to the painting. I added one just to the left of the house. So far, I was pretty pleased with the way this little painting was going. And I was completely feeling like I was in heaven. All alone on a Tuscan dirt road gazing up at this stunning sight - with all morning to try to capture my vision of what this landscaped looked like to me. 

Making the Olive Trees:
Time now to give those olive trees some depth so I added a very slightly warmer and lighter silvery green to their tops. The sunlight was coming from the left and I wanted to be sure and convey that in the painting. 

At this point , something was bothering me concerning the house, my planned focal point. It just didn't seem strong enough to me, or in other words, wasn't grabbing enough of the attention. After all, it was the star of this painting, it has survived for centuries, been occupied by the Nazi soldiers and then returned to the Contessa. Was this painting going to be a scrape off?  

This (below) is the hi-resolution photo. Click photo to enlarge.

Adjusting the Focal Point: Everything I've studied about focal points can be summed up in this: They usually contain the lightest light and darkest dark so that they will "hold" the eye with their contrast and they are placed at certain strategic points in the painting.  At this point, moving the house within the composition would have been a disaster. Too late for that adjustment. 

So I chose to adjust the contrast and to connect the darks in the house and in the trees by enlarging the shadow a bit, adding two darker references as windows and then lightening and warming the sunlit area of the house. It worked and provided a great lead in - taking the eye directly to the grape vines and hopefully around to the silvery olive trees and then up to the house again. A circular composition plan. 

Lighting the Grape Vines and Olive Trees: Now I was thinking how do I create "distance" in the field before the house? I made the sunlight on the distant grapes a cooler and lighter green than the grapes in the foreground . The distant green contained sap green, a touch of red to cool it and some white then a bit of cadmium yellow. Exact color "recipes" always elude me. I just mix several piles on my pallet of the color I think I'm after and then try a very small amount to see which one will "read" correctly before making a huge commitment. In a perfect world, I want to put a stroke down and leave it alone, knowing it's correct in value and temperature. Premixing helps me do this.   I used a warmer green in the foreground to convey the closeness of those grape vines. Same procedure with the olives...warmer by a very slight amount in the front with a bit more dark value in the shadows and then lighter and cooler slivery green as they recede into the distance.