the Elusive Rainbow

Tuesday evening

This morning, I packed my painting gear in the car a little earlier than usual and set off to class.  I made a stop first, though, at a craft store where I could buy a decent sized sketch pad for use in class IF I finished the landscape.  My teacher wants me to practice sketching figures before starting my next work which includes people.  That's not a problem and is a very good idea since I haven't done very much drawing in a while.  However, all my so-called sketch pads are of the small, easy-to-take-on-a-trip variety.  I want to try to keep my work loose and thought bigger would help - freedom of movement, large gestures instead of tight little lines.  I hope.  I don't know because I didn't get to it, yet.

Once at class, both my teacher and my friend gathered around when I put my painting on the easel.  Now that could be flattering only I knew they wanted to see if I had a coup.  Did I manage to get the rainbow right?  Well, you know what I think.  My friend was delighted that I had captured the arc correctly.  My teacher?  She took a look, turned to me, studied my face in a can-she-take-the-truth sort of way so I nodded and said, "I know.  It's not right; I'm hoping you can help me fix it." 

She laughed and said, "Well, it is tacky!"  Trust me, she didn't mean the paint was tacky to the touch.  She meant the rainbow was garish and awful.

Turns out she agreed with me completely.  The lower half of the rainbow works, but the upper half is a disaster for the reasons I mentioned last week.  The paint is too heavy; it lacks the necessary luminosity that is there in the lower section.  The red has an especially hard edge.  She didn't think the angle of the arc was correct until she looked at my photo again.  Then she realized that it was the width that was wrong.  Anyway, we discussed various solutions and settled on what we thought was the most likely to succeed.

We were wrong.

I tried another possibility, and that one was better, but . . . No banana.  I fixed another problem areas in the sky (clouds on the diagonal pull the eye down in the same way the hills already do).  By that point it was almost time to go, and I said I'd work on it tomorrow by simply starting over and doing what worked on the bottom portion.  That's when my teacher had an epiphany, "Aha," she cried and proceeded to tell me what she thinks will work best.

After spending a little time looking the photographs on line, I agree.  I'll show you on Thursday (David's birthday) what I paint tomorrow.  Keep your fingers crossed; I'd hate to show D a birthday gift that's been sawed in half!