Salaric

I decided that some dark low-lying hills would look right with the sky, but I was thinking alien planet by this point and thought that the atmosphere could well be thicker and more like water than air. I began thinking of shallow type, dune-like hills, in black shimmering metal sand. Without air it wouldn’t oxidise would it? Ie it wouldn’t rust and the grains of alien sand would be little dull pieces of metal.

I painted these in a similar way to the sky, except that I used a smaller brush with the bristles all grouped together with a rounded end (officially known as ’rounds’). I also made sure that instead of horizontal lines I made nice shallow swoops, contouring the hills. I used the lighter colours to highlight subtly the dividing lines between one hill and the next, giving depth of field to the picture.

I also made sure that the further-away hills were lighter shades with different colours mixed in; this is the opposite to what you would normally paint. I felt it would create a nice effect and I also added just a touch of a bronze metallic paint, just to give it a slight metallic lustre in the right light. This, of course, is completely lost in the photo!

I painted the furthest-away hill first using :

Mars black 036

Middle grey 064 (Daler-Rowan Series A, Cryla acrylic)

Titanium white 009

Sap green 375

Copper 230 (IMIT)

The middle hill was painted using :

Mars black 036

Lemon yellow 651

Cadmium orange 619

Copper (IMIT) 230

The bottom/foreground hill was painted using :

Mars black 036

Cadmium orange 619

Titanium white 009

Copper (IMIT) 230

Again I left it to dry overnight before starting on the denizens of the picture!