Painting Month: Day 22 Recap

It’s day 2 of the final week of my residency and my final project is a 15“ x 30“ painting of a scene in Inverness, CA. On Day 1, I designed the composition, drew the outlines of the big shapes, laid down an underpainting, and blocked in the background and mid-ground.

Blocking in the foreground

I spent the entire day focused on the foreground and I had to work through a series of challenges. First off, I was feeling pleased with how the painting was coming together, particularly the background hills:

Large canvas on the easel: pale sky, layered orange hills, and a bare orange foreground underpainting with visible brush striations, no bushes yet.

Due to that, something I struggled with was every stroke I added, I felt like I was making the painting worse.

Another challenge I struggled with was maintaining the (rough) value structure I had outlined. As you can see in the picture above, there are some subtle value indications in the monochromatic underpainting in the foreground. I found it challenging to stick to that outline when I started applying color. I started doubting the decisions I made before and choosing something different now.

The bushes

I started this day by tackling the bushes – the furthest away part of the foreground. This was the very first thing I started with on the smaller study and I really liked how it turned out in the study:

Small study on a tabletop easel: loose, blended brushwork forms an olive bush band over pale water, under a peach sky and orange foreground.

I struggled to get the same loose brushwork on the larger canvas, at least as of yet:

The bushes now blocked in as an olive-green band across the middle distance; the foreground below remains a flat, tighter-brushed orange wash.

I still feel like I was able to define the overall form and think with some finessing, I can achieve something like what I painted in the study.

The grasses and flowers

The rest of the foreground is composed of some tall grasses in the middle and some smaller bushes/flowers at the very bottom of the canvas.

I blocked in really rough shapes, trying to keep it simple and stick to larger shapes as opposed to getting bogged down in details. Here is where I ended the day:

End of the day: rough grass and flower shapes now blocked in at the bottom in darker greens, alongside the finished bush band and hills.

Wrap up

On this day, I managed to block in all of my shapes and effectively cover the canvas with color. This is a crucial step in being able to stand back and assess: what needs refinement or correction, what areas to leave simple, what areas should be more detailed.

As I look at the grasses in the foreground, it’s hard to imagine how I’ll be able to turn that into something akin to what’s in my mind, but that’s a problem for another day.