If you are able to take a holiday this year, you might be lucky enough to spy a beautiful vineyard on your travels. But, even if you are not planning a trip, there are plenty of vineyards to discover, right here in the UK! In fact there are more than 650 in the British Isles covering approximately 2000 hectares.
Where I live in the south east of England, the climate and soil seems particularly suited to grape growing. So it is no suprise that Surrey, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire have the largest share of the vines in the UK. However, there are many more growers to be found in other parts of the UK, including Scotland!
In Surrey we have one of the largest single estate vineyards, 'Denbies' (also a great place to see exhibiting local artists throughout the year) and just in the next village to me is Godstone Vineyard, whilst over the county border into Kent we also have 'Squerrys' which has produced a number of award winning sparkling wines that are said to rival those from the Champagne region!
In our vineyard tutorial you will have the opportunity to look at several ways of creating the illusion of distance. This will include looking at our use of colour and our use of brush marks. In my painting I have also adapted the scene by adding hills into the background to increase the sense of distance even more.
To begin, we will work wet into wet to add our sky, lifting out clouds before working into the distant tree line. We will consider the level of detail we use, keeping our colours muted and our shapes simplified.
As we move into the mid-ground we will adapt our colours adding warmth and texture to our buildings and the dry, dusty land. We will allow our colours to mix and merge together in places to create the illusion of form whilst keeping the details subtle.
In the foreground we will add more vibrancy and warmth to our use of colour, whilst increasing the level of detail. We will work onto dry using our brush to create positive shapes as we build up a range of values to give our vine foliage form.
To find out more about this project, take a look at the short video below.
You might notice that there are more videos in this tutorial than the average one ~ don't let that put you off! Unless you are working on 20"x16" paper (like me), the painting will actually take a lot less time as you will have less paper to cover if you work smaller!
Although this larger painting has taken me longer, the techniques used for this landscape are a great way to work quickly as you are not reliant on layering lots of colour ~ which makes it a perfect technique for painting outdoors.
Why not see if you can adapt some of the ideas you learn from this tutorial and make the most of your summer by painting a landscape en plein air and perhaps, even a vineyard near you.
Happy Painting!
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