But enough beating around the bush, so to speak. I figured out why Michelangelo, before spending two weeks dismantling his complex scaffold that covered one half the floor space of the Sistine Chapel (the ceiling was done in two halves and one should notice how different and more bold the last half was, since he only got to see the full effect from the ground the first time he took down the scaffolding), made the announcement that it was complete. It was so he could keep to a minimum the number of comments like my wife made when I figured I was minutes from coming to an end with this one, my first Redwood forest painting...the likes of which went, as I recall, "I like the way it's going". I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to hear that after four years of work. But in my case, it was just a few days, so I got over that before the next crisis struck.
In this forest scene (photo at left) from the Avenue of the Giants we recently visited, I see the forest of Redwoods cast deep shadows. I demonstrate here one of my most common approaches. Though the scene is less than 50% dark, I find it convenient to start with all dark. So here I coated my board (Have I ever mentioned I don't like canvas? No I haven't till now) with a near black latex house paint. That dried quickly, so this time I'm not squishing yellow into black, but working with darker colors on a darker surface as well as marking the approximate lighter areas. Even though I will be applying lighter and lighter tones over many areas, to me the act of always painting light over dark (as opposed to always painting darker over light, as necessary on a white canvas), just makes sense because that's how nature illuminates the world. So this is the piece early on, about 1/2 hour. Here, at 3 1/2 hours I abandon acrylics for oils. Completed painting. Hues primarily used were greens, yellows, and blues. Blues in the shadows and yellow in most lights bracket the green, one warm and one cool. Sometimes my paintings go in a direction that's slightly off from the original because I'm not so much copying as what I think is mimicking how nature paints with light and sometimes pushing it a bit, maybe emphasizing a few kinds of contrasts, for example. But enough beating around the bush, so to speak. I figured out why Michelangelo, before spending two weeks dismantling his complex scaffold that covered one half the floor space of the Sistine Chapel (the ceiling was done in two halves and one should notice how different and more bold the last half was, since he only got to see the full effect from the ground the first time he took down the scaffolding), made the announcement that it was complete. It was so he could keep to a minimum the number of comments like my wife made when I figured I was minutes from coming to an end with this one, my first Redwood forest painting...the likes of which went, as I recall, "I like the way it's going". I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to hear that after four years of work. But in my case, it was just a few days, so I got over that before the next crisis struck.
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This is a tree on my son's land in California. This is an illustration of a certain technique--not the only one available. I first painted the base sky in acrylic so I could paint over without having to wait a long time for the paint to dry. After about a half hour I painted in the whole tree in shades composed of cobalt blue, permanent green light, and burnt Sienna with black. Almost everywhere I thought there might be a leaf was painted in with these colors, even where the foliage was to be in full sunlight. That way, shadow would be available everywhere (even in full sun, there's evidence of shadow interspersed between the leaves) without having to be reapplied much. The forefront grass is just Raw Sienna. Without waiting for anything to dry I painted into the dark wet shadow color with Lemon Yellow and a touch of Cadmium Red Light. The yellow in the lighter mixture combines with the black in the darker mixture to produce a yellow green and the Cadmium Red Light keeps it warm. This wet into wet process takes patience and a constant reapplication of fresh clean yellow as it almost at once turns to darker midtones as it picks up the shadow color beneath. This way, both the light and the intermediate shadows are developed together. The continuous reapplication of color ends up depositing a significant amount of paint on the board and can make in many places a heavy impasto of paint that is hard to manage and keep from turning to mud. The picture at left shows it after an additional four hours and takes it to a point I felt was as far as I wanted to push it in this wet on wet process before I ruined it. Now the question becomes whether to leave it with this impromptu look or continue later when dry. I wonder which it will be. I can never stop messing with things. I'm sure to revisit this later. Without further fanfare, here is the finished version unless I think about it much longer. It's where I ask myself whether the last day's work was worth it or if I should have left it at stage 2. I hate it when that happens. |
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