Lavender #3 – Final (For Now?)

For the last 2 or so weeks it has been appointments and appointments and ordering this or that and consolidating little things and I am so sick of it I could scream!! My lavender painting has been sitting on my easel, I see it every day, and at last I have found time to work on the painting. Finally. Oh, finally! Something fun to do.

I wanted to accomplish a few things with this painting. One was simpler, more blended brushwork throughout. I wanted to grey out the distant colors a bit for a sense of atmospheric perspective. The trees, too, need to be cleaned up a bit. I think the pale field before the second level of lavender could indent a bit more on both sides of the left hand tree. I won’t say this is a masterpiece, but it has a bit more a painterly quality in it, has a decent sense of depth, colors aren’t too overwhelming.

This is painted in Golden Fluid Acrylics. A Sta-Wet palette doesn’t keep the paints wet as they are so fluid – the heavy body acrylics work well with the Sta-Wet because they are thicker. This means working a bit differently and I have found I like them best when they are a bit dryer – great for dry brush. Too much water in the paint – or in the brush – and they can drip down on completed paintwork, or form a rather interesting craquelure.

I have been putzing on this painting for quite some time, so here is a series showing its evolution – earliest paint

15×20, Langston watercolor paper, Golden Fluid Acrylics.

Lavender #2 – Stage 2

With a hurricane, what else can you do beside bake bread and listen to music and watch TV or read a book?

Paint, of course!

Below is Stage 2 of my Lavender #2 of yesterday. I worked on brushwork, details, and all those other lovely things. It is still mounted on the coroplast and taped down, but I like to see what I have by importing the image into Lightroom and then adding a frame. It does help me see things.

I am not too sure where I am at with this painting – I rather like it, but it is a bit more fiddly than I want it to be. I tend to dab – other people I know tend to use short vertical strokes. What I would like to see is an effective stroke, simple, long or short, in my own work. Not easy to do . . .

The rain is falling with a soft sound – the air is cool – and the birds outside the studio window are twittering away. Time to get away from the lights and the lavender and enjoy the peacefulness of the day.