Madrone Madness #3

Painting #1 Saunders cp 200# 10 x 14

I decided to put the first painting in after taking another look. Not as bad as I thought….oh I don’t know! I am not too keen on those leaves that I decided needed to be there but at least the lighting is beautiful.

 

painting #2 Saunders cp #200 10 x 14 inches

I figure that my madrone tree series require a category all to itself. I have so many large madrones on the property, I could paint 100 paintings and still keep at it. The only thing with madrones is that they are an evergreen, so I won’t have much variety other than the lighting, the surrounding environment or time of day. I will be painting in all angles, different groups, the more I looked around the more I realized, dang, there are a lot of large madrones here! I think Monet had painted his pond and garden many, many times.

These madrones were painted yesterday morning. This morning while I was preparing my coffee, I noticed the lighting that always seem to suck me in but I resisted, yay me. It was 7 in the morning and I convinced myself that it is too late, it worked (this time).

I encountered several problems for painting #2, such as the background foliage, there was a myriad of light, foliage and drama in the background but I struggled with trying to marry that up with the focal point.

My learning points:

• With this painting, I focused too much on “how do I do this” which cut my freedom of expressing in half, I faltered, which affected the painting.
• Continuing to learn values and color relationship, very important.
• Be decisive! Be Bold, it won’t break me or my brush.
• Choose my focus, is it the background lighting or what is in front of my eyes, choose! I can’t have it all, quick, decide.
• Painting en plein air is important because while I painted these madrones I kept thinking that if I didn’t do all this painting with the subject in front of me, I couldn’t do these madrones justice. Madrones has this beautiful red quality to the bark and interlaced with black and burnt sienna. My personal experience with painting en plein air keeps me striving to keep the integrity of the subject true. I can’t do this without personal observation and experience.