The Gathering Storm

The Lonesome Traveller : Finished !

The Lonesome Traveller : Work in Process

A short poem inspired by my painting "Echoes from the past".

As I endlessly roam along untrodden raods
Seeking lost memories of forsaken homage
Blowing ashes off long forgotten knowledge,
Echoes from the past..burdened with heavy loads
Come telling of valour,of ancient lore
Of invincible fortresses,of battles and gore.

Mustapha FARMATI

Echoes from the Past : Final Version

Dressing up the trees and bushes!

When painting trees and bushes,it's the relationship between light and dark,between hilights and shadows that really makes a difference between a 3dimentional tree,with convincing depth,and a flat thing that would never look like a tree.

Keeping in mind that I'm not looking for things to distract from my focal point,but rather reinforcing it,I kept the tree fairly dark.I also bended it towards the the right for two major reasons.First,to take the viewer INTO the painting and second to work as a pointer to the focal point.

Defining the darkest of my darks

Next step was to define the deepest and darkest areas of the paintings..those are mainly shadows within shadows.I also laid down the background for the tree pn the left,bushes at the foot of the kasbah and the trees and bushes on the right bottom.
It is,I believe,wrongfully assumed that the foreground in a landscape painting is the most important part,where action takes place,and where details are carried out in the finest of details...well,while the foreground is visually the closest part to the viewer,it doesn't have to be the most important in the sense that everything that happenes in the painting should be jammed therein.
In this painting in progress,the focal point isn't in the foreground,so I'm keeping it shadowy and dark to reduce it's visual impact on the viewer and therefore reinforce my sun-bathed focal point,and create more depth,and above all,bring more drama into the painting through this play of light and dark.

Introducing colour :

I worked on the sky and clouds,using glazes of the same colours of the underpainting(unltramarine,cobalt blue,white and paynes grey).The clouds highlights were warmed up a bit with some tiny bits of yellow ochre and orange.A mixture of magenta and ultramarine was also introduced into the clouds shadows.

Then I moved down to the landscape,working from background to foreground,doing my best to create the illusion of depth and reinforce the effect of the atmosphere.I also made sure not to lose the contrast of light and shadow on the valley which I already had on my underpainting

Imprimatura (underpainting) :

Still keeping in mind that I want it to be a painting with a lot of mood and drama,I thought the most efficient way to achieve those effects is to handle light (and the absence of it) in a way I haven't tried before.That's why an imprimatura seemed indispensabe.An imprimatura is basically a thin wash of paint used to tone the canvas in order to have a more netural tone than the white of a canvas.colours seem darker against the bright white of the canvas,and that can be very misleading.An imprimatura was also indispensable for old masters on the enduring process of creating a masterpiece.It was done in transparent colours,mostly earth ones,to keep the sketch or drawing visible.
An imprimatura is not exactly an underpainting,but I combined the two in one step because I also wanted to define the values of the painting right from the start.In other words,I wanted to define the darkest of my darks and the lightest of my lights.

Now that my cartoon is ready,I started figuring out ways how to transfer it to canvas.I had ideas in mind..but had doubts about how effective they were.Gridding seemed the most recommended technique,but as that involved having to draw everything again,I had discarded it from the start.Using carbon paper would smear the canvas and the lines of the transferred drawing would be too large.A head projector?!Then someone on a forum carelessly suggested something that seemed to me just the best deal!

I rubbed the back of the cartoon with blue chalk(any colour would do).

I then tacked the cartoon on the canvas,chalk covered side downward,and went over the drawing with the same pencil I had used to draw it.This is what I got.The lines may not show well on the picture,but they were pretty easy to follow in real).

Echoes from the Past : A Work in Progress

Hello again!
It's been quite some time I haven't posted anything in my blog.But I know that is quite normal given my style in painting which demands quite a lot of time.
But here I am anyway,looking forward to sharing with you the step-by-step of a painting I'm currently working on.

The idea..the theme of this painting has been haunting me even while I was working on my last painting...something with a lot of mood..a lot of drama..something that takes my painting skills (I'm still learning..just beginning to learn seriously I'd say!) to another level.

I wanted it moody..dramatic..and I wanted it in the style of Old Masters..I've been doing countless hours of research in this sense..

So I reached for my pencil and decided to start with a cartoon (not quite the meaning that first comes to mind!).A cartoon is a detailed drawing on paper of the same size of the canvas it is going to be transferred to.Something commonly practised by old masters. Rembrandt did cartoons even for his six feet large paintings!

After about three weeks of working on the cartoon,this is the final result :




75 x 50 cm

If any of you has ever been to Morocco,then they probably know what a "kasbah" is.For those who haven't,a kasbah is a fortified building for which the south of Morocco,especially Ouarzazate,is famous for.