Contemporary Landscape in Acrylic | Alison Stafford

I love to experiment with mark-making using found objects or different ways to use more traditional tools. For this exercise I use a limited palette to create a bright contemporary landscape. When you’ve done this painting, maybe you could do it again using a different palette to create a more serene scene.
 
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Materials

• Surface:
• Winsor & Newton Classic Cotton Deep Edge Canvas 40 x 40cm
  
  
• Paint & Colour:
• Golden Acrylic Heavy Body:
• Titanium White
• Naphthol Pink
• Cadmium Yellow
  
  
• Winsor & Newton Artists’ Acrylic:
• Cobalt Blue
  
  
• Brushes:
• 1″ Decorator’s brush (or cheap alternative)
• Flat Bright brush, size 2, size 6 and size 8
• Round brush size 12
  
  
• Plus:
• Stay wet palette
• Winsor & Newton Tear off Pad 23 x 31cm
• Water pot
• Palette knife
• Kitchen roll
• Bubble wrap
• Anything you can make interesting marks with

Shop Golden Heavybody Acrylic

Composition

Divide your canvas roughly into thirds, making marks at each edge so you can build your composition with the focal points of your painting sitting on the axis where the thirds cross.

Step 1

Sketch the cottage on the top right third where the lines meet. Add a treeline to either side.

Step 2

Using jagged lines, draw a rough path from the edge of the canvas at the same level as the cottage, down to the edge of the canvas in the middle of the bottom left third, then back up again from the bottom third mark itself, to just below the top third, giving the impression that the path goes around a corner. This forms a bank on either side of the path.

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Step 3

Add a closer treeline in front of the treeline on the left, ensuring that your shapes differ in height and width. If in doubt, look at a