New Work: At The Park

At The Park

9" x 12" acrylic on canvas

*******updated pics with some corrections to follow Saturday, 1/21

I finished this one today, Friday. I am happy with the results but will let it sit for a little while and if something comes to me, a better idea, then I will change it.

Technical Stuff:

I knew it was going to be a challenging painting in the sense that there seemed to be a lot of details: benches, tables, shadows, groups of bushes, etc. In the end though, the details aren't what almost killed me. What got me nearly was the fact that every time I made a move, I had to make a counter move. Basic painting isn't that complicated. The process is essentially an endless series of corrections along with a few different principles. To begin with, adding something to the scene affects everything else that is already there and in turn, will affect whatever you add after that. Trying to anticipate this is a good approach to minimizing corrections but honestly, correcting as you go brings good and surprising results. Problem solving, for me, is one of the attractions of painting. The other idea that is pretty basic is the concept of adding and subtracting through the use of negative and positive space. The gazebo in the scene is a good example. Each time I worked on the trees behind it, I had to redo the space around those trees as well as the gazebo itself in order to keep it (the gazebo) in front. None of this is a problem or is complex to understand; it just "is." Lastly, I left out a bunch of stuff. All of the picnic benches in the distance for starters. I couldn't sort them out and in the end I just decided to ditch them and that it was OK to tell a different story about that park (minus the benches and the headache). I also consolidated the shadows which were scattered about. The scene looked "hectic" to me. I know of painters who can really swing a sun dappled scene but I am not one of them and that is OK with me too. The "cleaner" the scene, the happier I am.

More Technical Stuff:

The branches on the trees, especially in the back, gave me some problems. I installed them and they looked thick and silly. I just kept at them and got them looking just OK. I finally hit upon the idea of this little brush that I have. I bought it some time ago but couldn't figure out how to use it. It is super tiny and is angled. (It is in fact called an angled shader.) It was perfect for dry brushing on the tinier branches.

I also added another color to my palette. It is called nickel azo yellow. This yellow is transparent and mixes nicely with ultramarine blue to make a lovely shade of "garden" green; what I think of for grasses and ivys and really green types of bushes. The green is nice because unlike a green mixed with a cadmium yellow, which can be very intense if used in a lot of the painting, this green is more subtle but it still stands out without really screaming a whole bunch. I dulled it down with the pyrole red (a cooler red) and I like the results a lot. The yellow does need an opaque pigment with it (azo yellows are transparent) if you want to cover something. It does not mix cleanly with white, meaning that it makes kind of a radioactive "baby poop" yellow which I guess could be good for something that I haven't discovered yet.

Lastly, I saved my cadmiums (reds and yellows) for areas that I really wanted to stand out, like the tree in the foreground and the tips of the bushes. I did use them, mixed with other colors, in the light passages but tried to temper them. It was interesting to me to try and balance saturation levels throughout the painting.

I had a productive couple of studio days this week. It is raining and windy today and so I don't think I will be going out. I am seriously considering a cleaning day, including the windows. Crazy huh?

OK, thanks for reading and commenting.

Libby