Painting a landscape

Last week in the oil-painting class we worked on a landscape based on a photograph. I chose a river scene near San Jose, New Mexico, that I photographed in August 2008.

Using pigment thinned with Turpenoid, an odorless paint thinner, I first sketched in the basic shapes. I didn't have a camera with me, but you can see below part of the sketch of the river.

Then we blocked in the masses of color.

The next part is to work on building the masses of shapes and adding detail.