I’m currently working on an oil painting of Reva Reservoir near Otley, West Yorkshire. I thought I’d keep a blog for the progress of this painting so you can see how I build my paintings in stages. Others may do it differently but this is how I do it! 
After taking many photographs of the scene I made a few pencil sketches and ultimately came up with a rough acrylic sketch (Which i’ll use as the basis for the actual painting). I used Daler Rowney Cryla acrylics for this sketch..
Initial acrylic sketch of Reva Reservoir near Otley
Then I stretched the canvas, added a yellow ochre background and let that dry. Once dry I painted a very simple outline of the basic image. The outline is only a guide and i paint over it and alter the areas if needed…
Reva Reservoir - Phase 1 - Ochre background and lining out
Next I quickly underpainted the basic areas of the painting using the darkest colours (I’ll be working from dark to light)…
Reva Reservoir - Phase 2 - Underpainting
and that’s it to date. I’ll update this post the next few days once the underpainting has dried and i can do more work..
Julia
And, of course, theres the big Chevin hill in the background. In case you are wondering what the lumps are in the snow, right at the foreground of the images. Its a flower bed thats been covered in snow. So what changes to make and should it be executed in oils? Obviously it would tone down considerably in oils and i’d need to add tones to the snow. Julia
