Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Yesteday Update and Painting

My apologies for not writing yesterday, but I was tired.  Sunday night I wrote out a list of "To Do's" for Monday.  There were four housekeeping chores, and it ended with sewing and painting.  It's enough to say that I crossed everything off that list but wound up too tired to write my blog.

Now I have to apologize for being too embarrassed to do as I promised earlier when I began this particular painting.  I had said that I would show all the work I did on this one, but honestly, I just can't.  Some of it is simply so awful, I can barely look at them myself!  

I will show what I worked on yesterday and today, but you are warned ahead of time.  What you will see is still pretty awful.  Below are studies 7 - 11.  On the left is #7 - another study for the stormy sky.  This was the one where I laid down the light colors first and then added the dark.  When I saw that it still didn't work and looked much like #1 - 6, I had to think a bit harder.  I realized that I was still dabbing uncertainly at it and was actually simply painting the same way as in #1 - 6.  

Then I thought I'd give myself a break and work on the bottom part of the painting - the ground with its plants and trees (far left).  There are three attempts in the center portion, but I was frustrated by not having enough room.  So I turned the paper sideways and did that part of the painting again.  While not even okay, those four are better than the sky.


Given the fact that I had filled up three pages with 11 studies that don't seem to have helped me at all, I decided to try to put it all together in still another study.  When I first started working on this subject, I drew a very, very rough sketch of just the building's outline and nothing else.  Today I picked that sketch to work on for yet another in what is becoming and long line of studies.


Okay, it's really not good, but I feel so much better!Oh, this painting is dreadful in any number of ways: the sky is a disaster, the building (yes, it was a fast and rough sketch, but really?) is way off kilter, and the foreground isn't there yet.    But working on the entire composition makes a difference; it makes me happy.  




2 comments:

  1. hum -- reminds me of Charlie Brown beginning to his book -- it was a dark and stormy night.....

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  2. I'm wondering whether the sky has become too black. Have you tried anthraquinone blue? It's a very dark blue and worked for me when I did my Evansville painting. I mixed it with ultramarine blue and cobalt blue as the sky lightened somewhat down from the zenith. Also, if the sky is so dark, will you be seeing white clouds anywhere? Where is the sun that shines through the clouds that would make them white? Just some thoughts.

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