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| A 24" x 48" oil painting for a daughter and son-in-law who know I like to paint large |
A daughter of mine wanted a painting I did from Church Lake in Washington State. It sold 17 years ago. A few weeks ago the owner brought it back for painting over repairs to a tear mended by a conservator.
Looking at the results surrounded by my other paintings, I wanted to do more like the daisies. It was a memory painting of Church Lake but I tipped the background to make the distances closer and more dominate as though the painting was in a canyon.
I have done one other landscape painting in which the foreground drops into a hole in the middle ground. I am happy to paint a commission for my daughter especially since I already wanted to do the subject. But she wanted it larger and a longer panoramic view.
I found a photograph taken from low on the ground which makes the snow peaks appear higher and gradually creating a hole in the middle ground. The picture was taken on the Coffin Butte Trail near Iron Mountain in Oregon. Photographs are one thing my paintings another form of expression.
I like challenges and do not want to repeat a past painting. The requested a 24" x 48" size made it more difficult to keep the juicy oil effect all over the canvas than the smaller one my daughter liked. The representation of the photo was not my goal making it more difficult to know when the painting is done.
I wanted the energy feeling as though I was painting "a la prima" on location. So I didn't look at the photo as I began laying in thick oils to the upper left corner then working all over. So I needed to keep up the rhythm of my first "all over the canvas paints. The painting could have been done the first day except the paint wasn't all thick and juicy all over. So the next day I did a sketch trying to firm up in mind the placement of visually recognizable flowers, driftwood, rock and mountains then just as it was almost complete I sketched again to warm up before I began for the two hours it took to finish the painting. Maybe this painting will stand up to the test of looking at it for a few months before it is hung in my daughter's and son-in-law's home.
5 comments:
Love the description of your process. The paintings are nice too.
A great painting.
The sketching always makes me stop. How artists can see the image in their mind's eye is a wonderful skill. I think this will be very rewarding for you.
Tabor, I have no idea in my mind's eye what my painting will be when I am finished. There is a traditional practice of doing a number of sketches before beginning to paint and then sketching lines on the canvas with charcoal before painting. Their saying is "A proper drawing on the canvas is a painting three quarters done". Another plus for the traditional method is after filling in all the spaces between the lines the artist knows the painting is complete.
My method is a journey with only a vague idea of a destination that could be changed at any moment. From the first mark on the canvas I try to see it in relationship to the rest of the picture plane. Every mark is important to the whole. Ideally the larger shapes and color zones first and then if there is a subject it emerges gradually pulling it to prominence and then possibly later pushing it back to lesser status.
Interesting to learn of your process. I suppose there’s a certain uniqueness to how each painter approaches their painting. Having never drawn other than geometric figures, much less only crudely giving them color, I have great respect for the painting you do.
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