Tag: tree

Sweet Lavender

More gouache! Such a lovely, forgiving medium. Mistake? Dry, re-wet, blend some more, paint over. Can you really ask for more? The only problem with artist’s gouache is that it stays water soluble when you are done with the painting, but there are ways to seal it and make it waterproof. I think I will try that out on some gouache painting failures – like my snow scene of yesterday.

After getting lost in a drift on that snowy road of yesterday, off in my Learjet for warmer climes and roads easier to navigate. May as well time travel a bit, too, and move from winter to late summer.

Back to lavender fields! The ones I have been doing in acrylic are a bit gaudy, but so is lavender. Some lavender is light, some is so dark it rivals the deep blues of lobelia. I tried to strike a bit of a more subdued approach to a large amount of lavender, and I think it works pretty well.

Artist’s gouache on bristol paper; about 8×10.

Greens Against the Sky – 2

I was not especially pleased with yesterday’s painting. After leaving it alone, looking at it again, it seemed to have all the same values for the most part. Today I decided to look at shapes and values a bit more in depth.

One thing I did was to change the elements of the picture a bit. I cropped off a lot of the left side and then made a composition out of that. Left side, middle value sky against light land and dark trees. Right side, darker land against lighter sky. In the middle, land and sky of similar value, mainly middle.

Obviously, the right becomes darker, and what I attempted to do was to create a shape of dark values with connections throughout the painting, connecting with right side to bottom and then to the left. Darks were connected throughout with the stone walls and into the trees. The dark trees in the upper left shift into a darker middle value with the sky.

I also tried to work with shapes – dark shapes with the middle ground tree being the focal point. The lighter shape is the land and the slope down the hill from the same tree. I have been reading a bit about how to work values to create focus – such as light and middle values as focal points surrounded by dark. The same can be light and dark to focus, and then surround that by middle values. Maybe that is what I was doing with the tree and shadow on the hilltop.

Anyway, my head is spinning. I know what I was trying to accomplish – shapes, values, warm and cool colors. Words are not easy to find to describe, so I will leave you for now with my mental and painterly chaos!

In a Sea of Flowers

In a Sea of Flowers

Not an especially well-taken photograph. I have a tendency to shoot quickly without holding still. As a result, a lot of my quickie shots are a bit blurry. Nonetheless, they do catch a mood that pleases me, such as a sea of flowers and a lovely tree. Our botanical garden is always a delight to visit.

X100V.