A Walk in the Country - A Step-by-Step Oil Painting Demonstration

John Hulsey

The Road to Ashland, Kansas in the Flint Hills. Photo © J. Hulsey

The Subject

I am always driving around looking for good subjects to paint—sometimes I can only get a quick photo—sometimes I can actually paint. In this case, I was driving in the vast rolling grasslands of Kansas known as the Flint Hills. This is the great inland ocean of grass where the nomadic Indian tribes of the Central Plains hunted bison and spent their summers for tens of thousands of years. The area is thin-soiled and marginally suitable for agriculture in the creek bottom-lands, but it is prime cattle grazing land. It is often very hot, dry and windy in the summer, and stunningly beautiful throughout the year. Very few people live here—there are more cows than people and often, the only sounds are the music of the wind and birds.

My Motivation

On this trip, I was struck by the combination of all the perfect landscape elements which typify the area, bathed in a warm late afternoon light. The September…