Now that the holidays have passed I found some time to paint again. My wife has been trying to get me to paint more landscapes and I finally gave in. I have always liked the way a poppy field covers a meadow like a blanket and thought I would give painting such a field a try. This painting took me three sittings over about four days. Due to work and family constraints, I do a lot of my painting at night after the kids are asleep. In my house this painting looked a lot darker (hence the title). But when I took it outside to photograph, it lightened up a bit. I guess there is something to be said about painting in natural light to get a true depiction of what you are doing.
Overall, I like how this one turned out. Although I am woefully deficient as a landscape painter and I can see numerous mistakes in this one. This is an 8x10 canvass, which I found really limited my ability to render the poppies. I think I may try this one again on a much larger canvas where I can give more individual attention to the flowers. I have been working on a larger scale here rencently and, in fact, have two partially finished pictures which are 18x24. However, I lost interest in both while painting and have basically abandoned them. For a painting that is going to take me more than one sitting, I find that I must really be interested in the subject matter or I find it hard to come back to the canvass once I lay down my brush. I guess I have a short attention span.
I like it, Charlie. You successfully conveyed the "blanket" effect, without losing the sense that they are individual flowers. I feel like if I look closely enough, I'll find Judy Garland lying there.
ReplyDeleteCliffe