Third week in a row I've missed my Friday still life group; so no progress on my plans for a large still life. Instead, I selected another of my photos from the 2007 Valentine's day snow to do this 6x9 painting. I confess I never really understood the pull of barns (or covered bridges) as a subject, but now I get it: it's the
red!
I'm still trying to figure out how to do distant, bare trees. These are as close as I've ever come to the ideal I have mind, which is--I'm sure you've seen these--those trees that are painted in a barest, pale dry wash depicting the fine, thick twigs at the end of the branches that give the tree its silhouette.
9 comments:
Beautiful painting - great red! And the distant trees look just right to me.
Nice nice...lovin' that red barn, and your trees look good to me, too.
I agree, the distant trees look great. And I LOVE your snow! It just looks so pristine and lovely, like fresh snow does. I know what you mean about the barns and covered bridges: they've been done to death, and often badly, so that it's hard to look at them with fresh eyes and see that glorious red that you brought out so well. Lovely painting, Laura.
this is beautiful
i love how you used the cool/warm reds on the barns for contrast.
excellent!
your trees, near and far, look quite perfect to me.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Thank you all for the nice comments, even from cold-weather-exhausted Tracy! All that white is appealing, Mineke--I'll have to remember to leave more even in non-snow scenes. Melanie--I didn't even notice that I used a warm and a cool red! I was thinking of a lighter and a darker red. Normally I would paint the whole shape then just go over the part I wanted to darken with another wash; for some unknown reason, I didn't do it that way this time ... a fluke, but I guess it works!
I get the feeling you want to pull a little more from the trees. I owe a lot to my mentor, Keiji Sinoharra, a master of Japanese woodcuts. In his work where there are distant winter trees they are almost bare twigs with no suggestion of canopy. Small bare stokes, much attention to spacing provide the appearance of the canopy. Best!
Oh and another things...I like the way you've painted the fence...not making it straight, letting is meander a bit, and not straight across the bottom...really adds to the life of the piece! (And I'm just ignoring the snow...pretending it is white sand! lol)
Thank you, Suzanne, and right back atcha: I love what you're doing on your blog; always an inspriation and a daily shot of the beauty of watercolor!
Thanks, Bill. I Googled Keiji Shinohara and saw some of his bare trees at www.dfngallery.com; they're an enigma: stylized yet realistic. I can see looking at his paintings that giving thought to the placement of each line is critical.
I couldn't paint anything straight if I tried, Tracy! And if it weren't for the "straighten" tool on Picasa all the photos on my blog would be lopsided too!
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