It’s been too long since I’ve done a landscape. Considering we are now living on an island surrounded by beautiful sites I think I’m going to plan a landscape painting at least once a week. Today I painted from the deck attached to our apartment, looking down onto a little well used shack amidst some trees.
I’ve said before, doing art is not like riding a bike, if you don’t use it you lose it. The challenge here is continuing to practice several different aspects of art without letting too much time go by before review. Many months ago I had planned to do a landscape weekly but that didn’t work out well with where we were living, I have no such excuse here.
So, basically over the week I would like to have at least one landscape session, one figure drawing session with a live model, one still life session and one portrait session. That should cover all the major aspects that I want to focus on. This still leaves me three days out of the week to focus on one particular aspect.
Here is my first Sunday landscape on Whidbey island, and I hope to have many more to come every Sunday, weather permitting.
Honestly I felt really lost in this painting, I wasn’t sure where to start. I wasn’t sure how to start, and I definitely was not prepared to deal with the random fluffy organized chaos that is evergreen trees. These are going to take a lot of study in order to paint them correctly. So, I tried to pull everything together with two basic principles, drawing and value. I wanted to make sure that the drawing of the shack was as close as possible and even if my colors are way off, I wanted to try and get the values correct. I figure if these two foundations are good, then the rest can slide a bit.
What went well? I’m happy with the drawing and value on the little shack and some of the values in the green.
What can I do better? First I need better control over my brush while painting in the cold after a workout while standing in front of an easel. I usually sit when I paint so this will take some getting used to, my hand was so shaky the whole time.
What do I need to do, to be my best? Easy, many more landscapes!
The “fun” thing about landscapes is that you only have about two hours to paint before the light is completely different, this is especially true if shadow shapes are a big part of your composition. Needless to say I was struggling with the partly cloudy day today. Some aspects of the painting include the daylight version of the scene (above) or the overcast version (below).
Overall I had a lot of fun painting “Hawks Beard Shack Landscape” and I’m looking forward to many more fun and challenging landscapes here on Whidbey island.
