A couple of weeks ago i declared the red barn (from Monday class) finished.  I’ve already started on a new painting, and I’ll post photos and discussion next week.  Meanwhile, here is the red barn.  The colors turned out ok, after all the drama with the optical illusion.  Otherwise, it was good practice for trying to improve my fine motor skills with a small brush on a small canvas.

This week i began a new painting.  The reference photo for this one was taken at Rocky Mountain National Park )entrance to Wild Basin trails.  I really liked the play of the rushing water and the still water, and the colors of and under the water.

The canvas I’m using is 16″ x 20″.  I began with a a couple of thumbnail drawings to be clear as to what i wanted composition-wise.  Then i drew in charcoal (then sprayed) on the canvas.  Today i began blocking in the darks.  The goal here is not to worry about the colors or textures being “right”, but just to begin to get the feel of the values.

 

I’m finally getting tired of this one.  In class Thursday i added some foliage at the bottom of the painting.  Did some more of that today.  Also touched a few parts of the background at the top.  On to next project.

I want to describe something i found so surprising that it seemed worth it to tell everyone about it.  …  A couple weeks ago i used a very thin burnt sienna wash (layer of paint mixed with mineral spirits) on the lower half of the red barn painting.  I did this because teacher and i decided that it was becoming very distracting to try to paint the barn when there was so much white left on the canvas.  (No:  in my other class, what I’m used to is putting on a wash over the whole canvas at the very beginning of the work– just saying).  Anyhow, that was quite a while ago and that part of the canvas was bone dry when i started today. So — I wanted to begin work on the waving yellow grasses in that bottom half of the photo. I mixed up a combination of yellow ochre, raw umber and a little white to make a nice mix for the grasses.  I mixed three different intensities, varying the white.  Note that there is NO green in the mixture.  I then started to try to paint the grasses.  What happened is what you see below: the yellow/brown mixture, when it hit the burnt-sienna-covered canvas, appeared green.  I double=-checked my mix, and double- triple-cleaned my brushes.  No change.  What happened is what you see in the second photo below: Then what i did was, on advice of teacher, cover the whole rest of the canvas with that same mixture.  When I’d finished that, all of a sudden the grasses appeared yellow again. Pretty something, right?!

Meanwhile, I also did some more work on the barn, which is still a bit “off”.

Two weeks ago i worked more on the trees on the hillside, trying to place sky holes so they made sense, and working on overall shapes.  Last week i didn’t do anything, as i was out of town.

Today i had class and decided it was time to paint the big tree back into the painting.  That means I’m pretty much done with that hillside.  I’m posting photo of what i got done on that tree today.  During this coming week I’ll try to finish it up.  Then need to complete the background, which is still unfinished.  And then I’m going to start something new.