Oil painting: How To Paint An Urban Landscape
It feels a bit wrong for me to be writing "how to" articles, but people keep asking me how I build my landscapes up so...this is how I do things, anyway. I learned this through experience and trial and error. (A Fine Art degree at the end of the 90s/beginning of the noughties was no help in this area whatsoever, fun though it was...)
Working from Back to Front
Sometimes the scariest thing that a painter can find in front of them is a blank, white, pristine canvas. But don't worry, this is when oil paint becomes really, really fun. Part of the joy of painting with oils is the fact that they can be moved around and worked with before they fully dry, layers can be built up, and there is so much opportunity for experimental under painting. (Next thing you know, I'll be pulling the stick out of my behind and doing experimental over painting, we live in hope!).
Anyway, the best thing to remember is that most, if not all, the paint that goes on in the first layer, will not be fully visible in the finished painting.
So you needn't worry about mistakes, and I think this means that I paint with much more freedom in my base layers.
Once you have an idea of the scene that you would like to paint, and have your source material (I paint from a combination of life, sketches and photographs), start sketching the composition in. With landscapes I find that it helps to get a wash down for the sky first. I used Prussian Blue here, thinned down with white spirit. Thinned paint dries fairly quickly (for oils, anyway, we're talking about half an hour here I reckon). Initially, I washed it in all the

way down the sky, to well below where the horizon line would be. Once the wash was dry, I slapped on a bit of titanium white about half way down, straight from the tube, and did a bit of blending. Added in a bit of Cadmium Yellow and
Cadmium Red and played about with that for the beginnings of the sunset. I kept bringing all of this well down past where I knew the horizon was going to be.
Then I started to block in the houses, which were mostly to be in shadow in this painting. I never use black in my paintings, I prefer to mix my own darks from a combination of Prussian Blue (brilliantly versatile, I love it), Burnt
Umber, Sap Green and Alizarin Crimson. You can get quite a variety of 'blacks' this way, as well as browns and greys.
At this stage I was more concerned with blocking in the dark areas than doing anything precisely, and I left the horizon line alone, as I still had quite a bit of wet paint knocking around with that sunset.
Next the boring bit, and the problem with oil painting: Leave it to dry. For a week. At least. Until it's completely dry, and keep an eye on that Titanium
White, it dries slow. (I know, I know, how annoying is that? But I try to paint in batches and rotate my paintings so that I'm not climbing the walls whilst waiting for one layer to dry before I can start working on the next layer- instead, I can work on another one.)
It is absolutely essential when working with oils to paint 'fat over lean'.
Thinned down paint will dry much faster than thicker paint. As oil paint contracts as it dries, if a thinner layer is laid on top of a thicker one before it is completely dry (and very thick paint can take months or even years to dry), the lower layer will crack the top layer as it shrinks.
If you're hip and experimental, you can try using liquin as a thinner, which I understand does speed up drying times. But at 33, I am somewhat set in my ways and have yet to stump up for some of this stuff. If you try it, let me know how it pans out!
...anyway. Once this first layer is dry, you can start on the next.

Go over the sky, make sure the background colour is just as you want it, the variations in light and shade graded appropriately. I tend to use a flat brush
(sable if I'm not too skint) to blend in skies. This next layer should dry a bit quicker than the first, there's a scientific reason for this but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. Still, you are looking at another three to four days of drying again.
Then you can get serious and, still using a flat brush, get in there and define your horizon. I know, I'm obsessed with this horizon, but my general principle here is to work my paintings from back to front, so I need that distant point sorted before I can build on top of it and come towards the viewer. Once the horizon or vanishing point is sorted, you can start to block in more details of your middle or foreground. Above, I got the shapes of the dark houses blacked in. I then used Titanium white to paint in the places where the streetlight would fall, and all the details that I could see in the very dark foreground.
More drying for a few days (OK, I really do have to go shopping for some Liquin and at least try it, right?)
Once my sky background was fully dry, I went in there with the clouds.

Shh! I probably did use thinner paint for the clouds here than the background upon which they were painted. But the ground was definitely dry, I promise. It had been on for a few weeks by this stage, after all. More details went into the foreground, I washed over the white areas with the appropriate colours and got the house windows etc. sorted. By now I was having to wait less time between layers, about 48 hours or so.

Next I painted the streetlight in, again using titanium white so that I could be sure in my head of where it was over the top of the shadows. The white was also a great base for the light that would be emanating from the streetlight. I also had fun dotting in the town lights in the distance (Tanfield and New Kyo if you're asking).
Another snooze-fest, waiting for that pesky titanium white to dry. But it's worth it in the end.

Some final washing over the lights with an orange mixed with Cadmium Red and
Cadmium Yellow, and I was finished.
So that's how I approach my landscapes, anyway. How about you? Let me know if you have any tips, as my long term aim is to loosen up..