Path to the Meadow 5x7
The painting I'm bringing you today is called "Path to the Meadow." It's a 5x7 that I painted yesterday on MDF, doing an underpainting using burnt umber.
This kind of scene is a lot of fun. I had this reference photo for quite a while, and I'm quite fond of these sorts of trees. What's interesting is that I kept passing on it because something was bothering me at a subconscious level. In the original scene, we had this mass of trees on our right and instead of a lone tree on our left, it was just this big chunk of foliage. Then it occurred to me - oh, I need to just make that a tree or something over there. Having that trunk there was really critical.
Path to the Meadow 5x7
These sorts of intuitions, these sorts of knowing’s, come from doing a lot of paintings and listening to that inner voice and reinforcing it. Whether you're an intuitive type or not, if you do a lot of painting, you're going to build up a repertoire in your mind of things that you know work and, more importantly, things that you know don't work. That's why I'm always stressing you need to paint more.
The real challenge with this kind of scene is that the foliage is all over the place. You can see hundreds of little leaves and little sky holes in the reference image. What I tend to do is come up with a certain pattern, fairly loose in the drawing. At the underpainting stage. It's only somewhat defined, but the actual details of the edges or any real detail firm up as I put in the sky.
One decision I made here was not to try and get fancy with this sky, so no clouds , just a color gradation. We're in the shaded area, and there is a lighted area ahead, that meadow that I did in the middle distance. Now, it wasn't all like that in my reference image. It was just a little subtly lighter bit. You could tell there was something there in between the grass, so I expanded on that. It wasn't long after I got into the painting process, I said, "Oh yeah, I'm going to make that nice and bright,"!
It's really one of the things that makes the painting, along with the sky being nice and bright. Even though you can see everything in this sort of shaded area, there's no real strong highlights. We're in a dark place going to a light place, and I think that's very effective. I love doing this kind of painting. This one has come out pretty well. I'm quite happy with it.
The path I inserted into the reference using the Adobe AI feature. Honestly, a lot of times, I ca get a better result by just finding a path in some other reference photo and just composing it in old-school. At the end of the day, though, I still have to take my reference image and interpret it as a painting, which is what I like to do. I want to make a painting that looks like a painting.
The interpretation that you make as a painter is your gift as an artist to the world. Don't overwork is always my motto I try to have an attitude as I’m moving through the painting of addressing each part of the painting, but then moving quickly on, putting something down and moving on.
Well, that's it for this one. I hope you're having a great week. Until I come back with another video and post for your edification and enjoyment, do me a favor, do me a solid - take care of yourself, your family, all your loved ones and stay out of trouble!
Cheers,
Mike