House with Purple Hydrangeas

I spent today in the studio completing a painting I began working on last Saturday. I took a long time on the drawing and getting it right on the paper. Yesterday I did the underpainting and lost some of it! But it was OK, I could still see the lines. Painting something like this is complicated because it’s hard to know where to begin. I decided that I needed to rough in the tree branch before doing the sky. But I needed to do the chimney and roof before the tree! I worked back and forth for awhile. In the second image, you can see the initial work on the house. I used light red violets in the trim and several soft yellows for the house. I was happy when I had covered up all of the blue! The hydrangeas were fun to do, as they were the only things catching any light. I decided to keep the sky in the grayed violet spectrum, to give the sense of an overcast day or fog (this is another Mattapoisett house).

The photo has a large tree/bush going up the entire right side of the picture. I didn’t want that. Instead, I added another, smaller and duller hydrangea, then a bit of lawn and some background trees. I struggled with the background a bit, but when I added violet over the cool greens and some very dull orange, it came together. I may work on the leaves some more, but for now I’m happy with it and thought I’d share it with you.