House details

I finished the house by adding windows and doors with light shades of blue and yelow ochre dropped in, painted lines to suggest clapboard and added rusty tin with brown madder mixed with Indian yellow. I painted the chimney in a faded brick color and lifted out the far right post of the porch with a stiff brush and clean water..

Close up cotton

I detailed the cotton, after removing the masking fluid, with shadows of cobalt blue mixed with rose madder genuine. When dry, I added stems and branches with a mix of cobalt blue and burnt sienna. In the distant cotton, I found that I needed to break the whites down smaller with the field color to make them look farther away. Finishing the cotton turned into a fairly lengthy process of push and pull until I was satisfied with the look.

Completed painting

With a rigger and shades of yellow ochre mixed with burnt sienna and burnt sienna mixed with cobalt blue. I added a few sprigs of grass and weeds into the grass I had earlier splashed on in very wet tones of yellow ochre and burnt sienna along the lower edge of the painting.

I then decided to darken the windows and doors just a bit. I had started them in light tones because it is very easy to have them be too dark and flat and I wanted to keep them in the distance. This image is the scan I am printing the giclée print from and has been adjusted for the printer..It prints very close to the original but looks much brighter than my photos of the stages.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing the steps as I painted "Cotton Fields Back Home" and I hope the techniques will be helpful to you in your paintings.