So- below is the scene back in April, the leaves are not fully out on the trees. This site is just down the hill from the plum tree in my last post. I am in the shady area that you can see in the plum tree photo, in the distance to the left of the tree.
The dark verticals and diagonal shadow shapes made for an interesting image. Now how to paint all that overwhelming info. First came the drawing below:
Then it was a matter of simplifying everything and just plowing through, trying not to get discouraged. At this point it looks like a child's painting:
Here was my set up:
The next day I returned and decided to move the canvas to my right side, as the sun was not striking the canvas directly- it was a bit more bright that way. The tall trees on the left were built up slowly with overlapping layers of color. There were many little sky holes and foliage color spots side by side that eventually produced the effect of light coming through the tree branches
After making sky holes one should put back some foliage spots over parts of the holes, and watch that the edges are varied and not too sharp. Back in the studio (or rather the front porch) I was dropping in sky holes, then partially covering them, and then repeating, adding branches etc, until I was satisfied with the layered look -
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| detail of foreground trees |
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| Primavera, Toscana o/c 40x50cm -available at the Stage Door Gallery |
