The Shadows

This months challenge on the acrylic forum for Wet Canvas is a scene of sun, light rays, shadows and trees.  It is one of those scenes that makes you go "ahhhh" when you see it, and it appears to be touched by the heavens. But as much as I loved seeing the image, my mind went "oh-oh, how we gonna paint this one!" This is the type of painting that a realist, a truly good realist painter, would make into a masterpiece. And I thought about doing it in a realistic style - well, I thought about it for maybe 5 minutes. But shook my head and said no.

As I once wrote before, a realistic painting style is very stressful for me. I fret and re-do so much of the painting, trying to attain a perfection in the rendering. Every line, every stroke, every value change - oh, I could spend weeks on the painting, and still not be happy with it. You see, I have found that realistic painting, for me, goes against my grain - so to speak. I become obsessed with details and fret so much over the "look" that I cease to enjoy the actual act of creating. And it is the act of creating that draws me to painting in the first place.

That is how I started to do my current style of painting, which I refer to as "shapes." I go past the details that I obsess about and past the realism strokes & blends, and break an image down into shapes & values. And then that is what I paint, what I "see" - and what I feel from the scene I try to convey with color and tone.

There are some paintings, such as the pomegranate I did recently, that does both a touch of realism mixed with the "shapes" and tones. And there are others, such as this one, that is purely shapes and tones. I guess this is just me, developing my own style. And I actually do get to enjoy the creation!

Acrylic on 9x12 canvas