It's a lovely sunny day outside and I still have lots of paint on my palette left from yesterday's painting outing. My piano student cancelled this morning so I took advantage of the free window of time to get outdoors and do some painting. I started reading my new book on oil painting with David Curtis so I thought I would try and incorporate some of the lessons from David that I just read. He observes that people tend to use too much solvent and mediums when painting. He also suggested avoiding white initially and don't include it in your color mixes until later in the painting. These are some of the things I was thinking about as I painted. My digital version of my plein-air magazine also came and there's a profile of Marc Hanson who is the painter I'm going to be studying with in July on Madeline Island. Detail from one of Marc Hanson's paintings is also featured on the cover.
I started with a board that was gessoed with Daniel Smith Venetian Red. This is a very intense color but I decided to work with it for this scene. I call this painting "Open Door" as this is what interested me in the scene. There were very interesting light patterns on the dormer of the building to the right which I think I gave too much interest to. It does take away from the focus of the painting which is the open door of the shed. I had a lot of fun doing this ... not worrying about what a mess it looked like when I started. I kept thinking about keeping it simple and to use big brushes to put the color on.
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| Open Door - morning light on my backyard shed |
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