Celebration: 150

I am so getting better at ‘en plein air’. I am discovering what really fascinates me: the play of light and how that works with negative space. I also discovered, with this particular painting, why photographs just do not cut it. I had not quite finished the bottom of the piece when I snapped a photo and brought it home after a long day of painting under the willow tree. I had been very thankful for that willow tree. The sun shone all day and it was hot. In the shade not only was I protected but the sunlight did not pounce off the surface of the paper and distort the colours I was using. I had stood for sometime gazing at the river and its surroundings before I decided what had attracted me to the scene besides the shade... I love the spaces between the blades of grass. I love the challenge to simplify, a necessary step because there are always too many blades of grass. I gazed at the background and decided what I was going to eliminate while keeping the illusion that I had eliminated nothing…. Fun! First I took a poppy red watercolour pencil and began to record the large spaces from the background enjoying the increasing difficulty of deciding which negative space to include. Carefully rendering the background without a lot of detail I came to the fun part of painting the water reflections within the negative spaces while at the same time keeping the tonal values and colour consistent with the surrounding landscape. Then, with the bottom I began to slap in some curvy strokes emulating the shaded grassy areas. I was tired so I packed up and went home. I had enough information to complete the painting at home. I printed off a copy of the photo I had taken and compared notes. Wow! The exuberance of the shaded strokes could not be seen in the photo. I continued with the same strokes, relying on memory, and left a little grass in the sunlight at the bottom. Standing back I decided that the patch of light at the bottom needed to disappear. It was distracting. Once I had finished covering the paper with darkish paint I moving into darker paint and created the negative patterns between the blades. A few more touches and voila! How I love my job!