House on Sugarland Road, 16″ x 20″, UART 320

Reference photo

Painting at end of demo

Hello Friends. I haven’t posted in some time. We had a trip in August then things got screwed up at my studio and I just haven’t felt much like painting.  But on Oct. 3 I had to do a demonstration for the Rockville Art League.  I began several weeks ahead of time with a landscape I had taken in early Sept. I did a 14 x 11 color study. It was OK.  But when I went to draw it on the 16 x 20 board, I hated the composition and I had NO idea where I was going with the color.  NOT SO GOOD!  On Oct. 1 I took a drive out to our agricultural preserve and found this scene right where I parked my car!  The photo doesn’t look like a lot, but I could envision making the large dark bush in the foreground red, and making some other changes. So I had to go with it.

The demo was in the evening and I had about an hour and a half. So I worked REALLY fast while talking A LOT. I had the drawing done but had to do the underpainting.  I don’t have an image of it but I used yellow green in the sky and under the house, purple under the trees, and reds and greens.  I was envisioning this being a red/green complementary painting.

I decided that I had to make some changes from the photo. First, I wanted to get rid of the large dark tree in the upper right corner and replace it with something softer and more suggestive.   Secondly, there were three trees at the site all evenly spaced. I decided to put two trees together and bring the third one down into the foreground.  I also decided to try to make the bush/tree above the red bush (in painting) into more of a dogwood-looking tree.  I also changed the house–unintentionally!  The porch with windows became much larger in my painting and the upper part smaller but I liked it better.

At the demo, it started to come alive when I added oranges and greens to the foreground grassy bank.  But the upper part of the picture looked pretty dreadful and the windows were glaring.  I looked at this picture through all of last week’s classes and couldn’t wait to get to it this afternoon. But I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to pull it off.  (You know how it is when you haven’t painted in awhile.  Can I still do this???)  I started with the house, putting a light pink over it all and not worrying about varying it.  Then I worked on the windows to soften them and added more foliage to left side. I did a lot of work on the trees.  Then moved over to the right side. I brushed out the bush above the red bush and went over it with horizontal strokes of greens and pinks.  I also brushed out the bush to the right of the red bush and started it with a dark brown, adding lighter strokes for the small branches.  I added the darker bush above, based on the photo, then the tree.  I purposely left it fairly flat, but added a blue green over a green to push it back.

The red bush was always meant to be the center of interest, so I added some more soft Schmincke reds then a more orangy red and some brighter greens until I was happy.  Then I tackled the foreground. I didn’t want to lose the sense of what I had put in but I knew it needed to be more subtle.  Then, I suddenly realized there was a serious problem with my composition!  I had added shadows coming from the trees to the right, based on what I saw in the photo.  However, the light was coming from the upper right!  So those had to go.  I did more work on the lawn in background, adding some brighter greens and shadows that I hope lead the eye to the bush and speak to the color in front of it.

Finally, the road.  I added a dark redder violet, then a grayed green over that, then some light violet.

I’m really happy with this picture!  I like the way the orange in the foreground leads the eye to and speaks to the reds in the bush. And I like my bunch of foliage on the right.  The house is there to give it interest but it’s not really about the house.

Now I’m free to play!  I will do two demos for my classes in November, but I hope to do some abstracted landscapes or something to just keep me working.  I hope to move my studio to a new location in December. But nothing is certain at the moment so it’s kind of a difficult time.  But I hope the rest of you are enjoying the fall.