Oil Painting on Cotton Canvas, November 2023
Reference and Inspiration:
Colorful Autumn Scene from a Walk in Bellevue
This is a part of my series of Christmas gifts from 2023. This one was for my mom, a.k.a meeeeeeeeeem!
The reference for this painting was taken during the fall. My mom and I took a walk at Bellevue State Park in Wilmington. She tends to like imagery of sunsets and nature, particularly when colors are saturated, and even more so when the saturated colors are warm. I saw she used this as her Facebook profile banner, and so I downloaded it in secret.
Simple and a bit of a flat composition. I like the colors. I probably should have played more with the light source and shadow, but instead just copied the reference image. If I could do it over, I may have put a horizontal, midtone shadow across the halfway point of the trees, probably with more light on the top-leftmost trees, and nearly none on the rightmost. Just an idea of how a finished painting can still be played with.
Thumbnail Sketches, Wash Over the Canvas, and Underpainting:
Rotating the Tiny Canvas to Measure Out the Treeline and Reflections
Using Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna to Draw the Right Lines and Values
Since this painting relies on a reflection as the compositional focus, it is nearly symmetrical. Doing the underpainting reminded me of a Rorschach blot. I rotated the canvas multiple times to make sure I measured out the actual trees versus the reflection, correcting it from 0, 90, 180, and 270 degree angles. I typically rotate the reference image on my iPad when doing this.
Rotate, paint. Rotate, paint.
The values were pretty clear to me. The darkest dark was the line of shadows under the trees. Next darkest: the muddied, blurred reflection of those trees in the water. The brightest area, which I rubbed out to nearly white, were some of the clouds in the sky. Identifying those gave me my bearings.
I mostly used straight lines for the organic shape of the treeline. It can make a big difference in my paintings if I use straight lines versus curved lines. I find that my curved lines, even if they are based on reality or a reference photo, often render big shapes inaccurately. In other words, I take up too much or too little space when using the “C” line. If I simplify the shapes in the painting with only straight “I” lines, then I usually get the larger shapes more accurately, and it usually looks more interesting because flat-edged shapes seem to be easier for our eyes to recognize.
Blocking In Color:
A Whole Lot of Blue on Top and Bottom. Autumn Colors like Fruity Cereal. Tarnished Reflection Colors.
Painting in Big Planes of Blue, Green, Red, Orange, and Yellow
Most of this painting is blue with varying degrees of lightness. I have found, also, that skies typically change slightly in Hue (what most people know as “color), as well as lightness. The gradient pattern I see in a lot of skies goes like this: from a darker, reddish Ultramarine to a colder Cobalt and adding white. Maybe even a Prussian Blue (it’s greenish) there, but very light and desaturated.
The trees themselves took a lot of mixing time with little execution; I had to mix the right hue, chroma, and value and place it on there. Example: light, saturated orange-yellow; pickup with brush and place without blending. There were too many colors across a small space, so I could not experiment much. I will talk more about the challenges of the scale of composition and canvas size limitations farther down the page.
What’s on my pallet?
- Titanium White
- Burnt Sienna
- Ultramarine Blue
- Cadmium Yellow
- Indian Yellow
- Yellow Ochre
- Bright Red
- Sap Green
- Cobalt Blue Hue
Of these colors, I used Ultramarine Blue the most because the sky takes up the most real estate. Then, I varied the blues with Cobalt. I used Burnt Sienna for the underpainting and for tarnishing some of the colors in the reflection.
Yellow Ochre came in handy when getting those earthy, tree colors, as it is a yellow-brown. Indian Yellow came in handy with the bright yellows and oranges in the foliage. Bright Red: I think you can see where I used that. But you may not see that I used a little Red to muddy those green colors in the shadows and reflection.
I used Sap Green sparingly with the yellows to make that lime green. I also used it in the stingy green colors in the reflections.
Painting Challenges & Solutions:
Organic Shapes Confuse Me. It’s Hard to Manage the Dry Time of Tiny Canvases.
Challenges:
A) Organic Shapes
The organic shape of the trees was surprisingly hard to capture, even in the small thumbnail sketches that I made. I kept warping the design and losing the basic silhouette of the tree line.
B) Dry Time
The size of the canvas also offered up some challenges. Because it's small, the paint never dried once during continuous painting sessions. If I paint on a larger canvas (say, a 24x36), the opposite problem is prevalent: the paint is spread thin and, too often, dries quickly, and I struggle to repaint and repaint in order to manipulate the surface again.
With this small canvas, It was so easy to make “gray mush” or “mud” because there was nothing but wet paint within a tiny area.
Solutions:
A) Rotating the Design & Using Straight Lines
For the organic shapes, I realized I wasn’t using some advice I had heard several times in art courses and tutorials. Rotating the canvas every session became necessary so I could measure out the right proportions of height, peaks, indentations, etc. relative to the edge of the canvas (and crop of the reference photo).
I also needed to employ only straight lines so that I could communicate a simpler version of the tree line. Kind of like distilling a complex idea with simple writing or applying the 80/20 rule at your day job. It ended up making it easier for me to render as well.
B) Carefully Mixed and Placed Paint
The layered wet paint over this tiny surface could only be solved by getting more intentional with my brushstrokes. So, I had to be careful to mix the exact color note I was looking for and placing it down without needing to adjust too much.
It’s a practical and unsexy solution, but there’s a lot of that in painting, frankly. Sometimes, painting realistically feels very engineered and designed. Not a lot of magic.
Final Impression and Lessons Learned:
Limitations Present Opportunities for Improving Particular Skills. Complicated Shapes Require Simplification. Many Solutions Are Common Sense, Nothing Special. Care About the Receiver or Viewer.
Canvas size matters. Next time I choose a canvas for a project, it may be necessary to consider that I'll have to be intentional and efficient with smaller pieces. I can probably work on a few at the same time, if I need to let one dry, say, and move to another. For larger pieces, just about the opposite is true. Covering them quickly so that the paint will flow and focusing solely on them seems to be the right approach.
Being forced to effectively mix and place paint was useful, as that exercise will help me work smarter in the future. Turning the canvas was essential in correcting my errors when transferring the subject from sketches to the canvas. It helps to deliver more information about the shape I’m trying to render. It also helps to see details in a new way.
I also learned (again) that simplification is necessary for all art, but especially tiny canvases. An image doesn’t need to be expressed exactly. That seems to be inefficient and overwhelming to do. Really, distilling the image to simple lines and shapes so it works for the viewer is all that’s needed, particularly on small work.
Ultimately, this painting was important to me because I wanted to give my mom something that said “I’ve been thinking about you”. And maybe that’s the best lesson from this piece (as well as all the other paintings I gifted for Christmas). There is something essential about making art for someone and gifting it. Such as:
- I think about them more while doing it. Asking myself about them, who they are, what they like, what’s good for them.
- I faced a kind of insecurity; Am I seeking attention or appreciation with this gift? Or am I really trying to give them something special? How do I course correct myself if I’m doing the former and not the latter? How do I stay in that headspace while making this?
- What does our relationship mean? Can I put that in this art?
Highly recommend making something and gifting it. Even if your skill level isn’t what you'd like.
My mom has had a tough year, and I love her very much, so this one was particularly important to me. And I hope to make more for her.
