Sunday, May 15, 2011

Plein Air - Magnolias

Following the State Forrest adventure, I headed into Williamstown after seeing a picture a friend took of a Magnolia tree by a small brook.  It looked so lush.  After finding out the secret location, I packed up the car and headed out shortly before 1pm.  

Armed with deet (because this was in high grass) I set up underneath a very high in the sky sun and got to work.  Note to self *start paying attention to the sun more in relation to where you set up because it moved from behind my easel to shining directly on it.  I was blinded by the light within an hour.  Everything got washed out and looked light blue.  I'm not ready to get an umbrella - no way - not yet. A nice woman from a local paper snapped some pics of me working.   

I had to leave after two hours because of blindness.  when I got home and propped the picture up, I was not pleased.  I hadn't realized how off my colors were in the bright sun. I tried to tweak it that night, but got nowhere.  very frustrated with it.  hardest thing I've tried to paint in a while.  seriously.

Two days later I was back, slightly earlier in the day, and determined to get it right.  

I didn't spend enough time working out the drawing/composition initially, so I had to re-do quite a bit of what I had done previously.  Plus my color choices were piss-poor.  but I stood there and got as much in as I could before snapping a couple pics and bringing it home to the studio for finishing.

Even at home, I spent a lot of time trying to get this to look right (or at least better). 

Very strong sun on half of my body for 2+ hours left me a nice shade of red, but eventually turned to tan.

No comments:

Post a Comment