Sorting Out a Painting

It was a gloomy morning at the farm today and it's not easy to choose what to paint when there's so many piles, so many buildings, so much decay.  I ended up trying to compose a painting from this scene.

Somehow this called for restraint on my part, taking the painting slowly and building it up from soft brushstrokes.  It just felt like I couldn't jump into it.  If the sun is out on Monday, I'll have to finish this in the studio since the scene will look completely different with a blue sky and bright sun.

Cold Morning on the Farm

The farm we painted at today is a very large, has beautiful views and, um, a lot of piles of stuff.  There are cars, some whole, some in parts.  There are piles of tires, propane tanks, scrap metal.  There are big hulking barns and squat huts.  Beautiful gardens, wild fields.  From all that, the challenge is figuring out what to paint, what to edit out.

LIly pond at Tregaron

It was a  beautiful day to return to the lily pond at Tregaron.  Last year I painted there through spring and summer.  I'd planned to go there earlier in September, but the Conservancy's website announced that a tree had fallen (a BIG tree) across the lily pond.  Today no sign of the damage could be seen.

The plants I was painting are called pickerel rush.  They have purple spiky flowers in summer, but those flowers were gone and the leaves were turning yellow.  Goldfish were swimming around the roots and I caught them and the reflections in the pond water.

Dark Shadows

I picked a spot to paint today early -- like 8:30 am -- when the shadows were long and dramatic.  By 10:30, they had changed so much (shorter, different angle) that I realized I needed to stop painting.  I will go back into this in the studio.

I have a lot of color variation to work out, as this is just the lights/darks and a few colors dropped in.

The 8-month old baby boy on the farm with the big blue eyes was glad to let me paint his stroller.

Reverse-order painting

 

You'd think it would have made sense to do the small study before I worked on the large painting last week.  But I didn't, so today I got to the farm early to work on a study that I hoped would help enlighten me about what I should have worked out before getting into a big painting.  I definitely see the benefit of the lighter, more violet sky and plan to work that into the larger painring.  Not so sure about the large and simplified shadow.  Interestingly, in spite of its flaws, the large painting in the state it's in from the previous post got a very positive response from the group of painters.After getting that out of the way, I worked on a small painting of the farmhouse and nearby buildings.

Rethinking the farm landscape

I have a feeling I'm going to be thinking and rethinking this one.  I spent some time in the studio trying to tame the large shadow but it was a monster that couldn't be controlled.  Same thing with the house.  So they're both gone, for now.  Monday I'll be back at the farm with a chance to see whether I can bring the house back.

Start of a Painting at Rocklands Farm

A beautiful day, here's the start of a painting.  More work on it next week.

Wisteria Trellis at Brookside Gardens

 Yesterday I thought I picked a chaotic subject for a painting.... and then today I found myself facing the wisteria trellis at Brookside Gardens.  It's a beautiful spot, I couldn't resist.

It's definitely not a simpler subject!  I was painting in a shady spot at a corner of the trellis and, in spite of that, had the same difficulty settling on the values of the colors I was using as I had in yesterday's bright sunlight.    I think the evenness of the yellows on the left and right is so odd -- I swear I mixed different colors to get them... but they read awfully close to one another.  Something to fix.

Trying to Bring Order to Chaos

I had 45 minutes today to paint outside and I picked what I thought looked like a reasonable spot to paint.  Well, it was chaos!

I haven't painted in the woods in a long while and I wasn't really ready.  It's funny how a "warm-up" painting is really needed to wade back into painting outside -- working with such intense lights and darks, such a large amount of information to distill into a composition.

I completely wiped out what I had worked on for the first 1/2 hour, and then went back in to rebuild the painting.  This is what was left when my time was up and I had to pack up.  I think I may need to look at the painting in indoor light to see if I have the color variation I was aiming for, particularly in the blues.

Still Life by Lamplight

I must have painted this one at night when we were in Maine, I can't remember exactly, although I know we tried the lamp on and off to see how it would affect our paintings.  I was in favor of having the lamp on.  I had over-emphasized the shade in my initial working of this painting, so much so that it loomed over everything.  Here at home I brought it back into balance so that the peach is very much in the foreground, and the white flowers of the hosta are in front of the lamp (and its shade!).

I really mean to work on new paintings, but I keep looking at the paintings from Maine and I still want to get them all into better shape.

Tomorrow the weather and my schedule should be just right for painting outside again.