Hill Barn in Morning Glow, 20 x 24, resurfaced UART

Reference shot #1

Reeference shot #2

Last Friday I drove to Loretto, PA to visit my friend Karl, who is in the Federal Correctional Institution.  I am his mentor–or at least I was. He’s mainly doing oil now and painting rock stars and I don’t think I have a lot to contribute!  Anyway, it was a beautiful day and I brought my camera, stopping on the way up and back to take pictures. In the morning, I filmed this wonderful barn that I’ve seen on every trip. The sunlight was coming from behind and creating a magical glow.  I’ve always loved the way the hillside forms a line that leads to the barn.  However, I made changes to the composition. I printed out three photos–two of the barn and a reference shot of cows.  I’m including the two primary shots so you can see how I rearranged elements of the landscape. I tried the barn on the left first, but decided that it should be on the right to offset the trees on the lower left.  This painting is done on the surface that I created in my last post. It was quite hard and rough and there were many bristles still stuck in the gel, despite my efforts to eradicate them.  But I decided to use it anyway, thinking that I was just playing. Of course, now, I really like the picture!  (They actually fit with the brush lines and aren’t too distracting.)  My biggest challenge was the large hillside in front of the barn. I had it too light originally and ended up brushing off some color to darken it.  It has a glow now, but isn’t too starkly different from the other grasses and barn. Because of the hardness and roughness of the surface, I ended up using a lot of soft pastels on this painting. I started with Holbeins laying in broad shapes. But they made almost no impact. So I moved to Girault and finally to softer Unisons, etc.  I thought about adding other details, larger cows in the lower right and a tractor to the left of the barn. But I decided against all of that. I like my three small cows in the background.  I’m off for New England on Saturday so I expect this to be my last painting and post for some time. I’ll be painting outside in Tiverton and Little Compton next Mon.-Wed. and looking forward to seeing old friends and new, as well as my mother and sisters. Enjoy the end of the summer!