Week 2 / Day 1 – Working the dark striation on the beveled sides of the arch. Compare to the far R side, which now looks greenish and unresolved; that will be tomorrow’s problem.
Wk2 / Day 3- R stone wall is resolved, and it is back into the tree for modulation and branches, branches, branches.
Wk2 / day 4 & 5 – All to the tree. What to put in, what to leave out. The tree wants to overwhelm the arch with branch “noise”, so abstract alignments supersede as a pruning logic.
This is nearly the whole image, yet the image is a bit wonky. The L side is washing out in reflected glare of afternoon sunlight and I have to make the shot at an angle, hence the fern.
Looking at last week’s dramatic climb from underpainting to something like a painting gives a false sense of painting being a whiz. This weeks images by comparison seem to be nearly identical to each other, but have much bigger differences than sprouting tree branches. With last week’s job of blocking basic shapes and colors established, then comes the longer process of creating harmonious colors, all in balance for tone, intensity and temperature. Shape of color areas must enhance the form and contours of the objects they relate to. The entire sky has to be reworked for vibrancy and tonality. And the tree is changed again and again, raising intensity and altering tonality to push and pull the branches up and back into space, or down and in toward the viewer. A few books on tape in otherwise unmeasured time, stopping only for the inevitable mental fatigue that leads to ruin.
DangerHart 