Just finished this for one of the WC landscape challenge images. Loved working the tree bark and experimenting with colors. Just read an article in The Artists Magazine that said that your colors can be all "off" from nature, but the painting will work if your values are correct. That inspired me to try this painting here. Normally I would have gone with the more traditional greys & browns for the bark, but when I looked at the photograph, I saw blue & violet in the bark - so I chose those colors to work with. They are repeated in the birdhouse, and although the sky looks white, it is a very pale violet as well. I worked with Permanent Light Violet & Light Blue Violet colors - makes for an interesting look I think.
Acrylic on 9x12 canvas
3 comments:
Nancie, this is really a beautiful painting! What a great setting for a home (i.e., I want to live in that birdhouse)!! Thanks too for the insight on the blues and violets...now that you mention it, I think those might be colors I often see in tree bark and never translate that to the page because it does go with what I "know". Interesting to think on...and follows I small glimmer of insight on a tree trunk I was working on yesterday...
This is a perfect post for me to see today. Yesterday I visited a museum that has works of California artists mostly painted during the1800s. In most of them, the artists had created wonderful depth by using a variety of colors that you wouldn't necessarily think would be in nature. One particular painting of mostly tree trunks stuck out like a sore thumb. It looked very flat and uninteresting and I think that was because the artist had used only browns on the tree trunk and only greens (mostly pure greens) for the foliage.
I know in my own paintings that I should be introducing interesting colors (that may not be there) into objects but being such a literal person, I sometimes forget to do it. I think I need to post a sign in front of me every time I start a painting so that I'll be reminded.
I love the colors you chose for the tree trunks.
I'm glad to see that I am not the only artist who struggles with this concept!
I hear you Sherry and totally understand - "going against what I know" is one of the hardest things for me to do in a painting. I think it dates back to kindergarten when we were told to color in an apple. So I very diligently took my light green & yellow crayons and started making what I thought was the most beautiful apple. Later on, as the teacher reviewed the work, she held mine up as "what not to do" because apples are red! (guess she never had a golden delicious). I was the only child who did not use red, and so my apple was wrong. I went home in tears. The next day, my mother sent me to school with an apple from our backyard tree -- and it was green & yellow! True story.
But seriously, Nancy hit the nail on the head. We have to remind ourselves sometimes to think outside of the box. I am in awe of paintings I see that do this, where the water in the lake isn't just blue. And snow that has violet tints. Nancy, how fortunate for you to do a recent museum visit and observe this concept in person - very inspiring I would think.
Colors convey feelings (warm, cold) and I always say that I want my art to convey feelings. So the colors I choose is an extension of that. Maybe I should make that note & tape it up on my easel!
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