Author: -N-

Dappled Light

More work with water and light.  Here I thought about some of the exercises I have followed from Rick Surowicz’s YouTube channel – lines, curves, and dots to capture branches, light, and leaves.  I think this painting worked out quite nicely.

Besides considering what I wanted in advance (a way of thinking that has taken a very long time to get to) by applying frisket, I also was determined to paint from light to dark and use glazing and blending.  Areas of color were also considered, and rather than trying to paint each leaf, I painted blobs of color to represent the foliage.  As a result, I built up layers of color throughout the painting as I moved along, and can say this is possibly the first painting in which I have done this.

I also had to be very patient!  Frisket is not happy when you blow dry it – it gets all sticky and you have let it set up again. As a result, this 6×9 painting probably took a couple of hours to do.  However, the results, for me, were definitely worth the time it took.  Perhaps my impatience is lessening . . .

Grasses in Water

I really liked the reference photo I had for this painting.  It was hard to really see at first – kind of busy with vertical and horizontal / diagonal lines.  And then it came into focus.  In retrospect, I think using frisket for the plants would have made them stand out a bit more, but in the photo they were a very pale wheat color without a lot of contrast.  I made them more contrasty and added darker browns and some greens for a better (I think) effect.

Water is a tricky subject – until you look at it a bit.  Flowing water is a series of colored shapes.  Reflections have some rules, but I have to re-read about those.  I am not too sure how I would express ocean waves crashing on the shore at this point, but flat water with a few ripples seems easier each time I attempt it.