On the Trail

This painting gave me quite a challenge -- and on more than 1 occasion, I pondered throwing in the scrap pile! 

Most paintings go through an "ugly stage" where things look awful & an artist wonders if they should even bother. It can be quite discouraging. But - we push ourselves through that phase & work the painting further until we can get to a "happy place" with it.

This painting, however, stayed in it's ugly stage much longer than usual for me. And I found myself truly doubting if it was worth it.  

Here are a few of it's "stages" - starting with the sky & basic lines & shapes. After adding the snow on the large pine I thought this painting was a loss. But I mustered some courage, grabbed a brush & started blotting in the shadows & lights on the left hand side snow bank. It was then that I thought I might be able to save it. But then I got to the cast shadows across the trail. Yikes! Your natural tendency is to angle them with the curves of the road. But shadows are cast from the sun hitting the objects and the shape of the road should not alter the angles of the shadows. A lot of re-do's on this portion to get to the final painting. And I used a clear see-through ruler to help keep my strokes straight - couldn't trust the eyes or the mind on this one! (and I still see spots I could tweak further)!