Hope's Art Journey

"Two Weeks of Color"   framed in a Mahogany and black frame.  Outside dimensions:  33 x 26

This painting was done on a canvas that was sanded and gessoed destroying a previous painting.  The painting had not sold for a while and I had this lovely frame.  The subject is from a bunch of photos I took in November.  In Florida, we have a change in seasons but you have to be quick because it does not last very long.  The river is called "Gopher River" and is close to the Suwannee River.  It winds back toward the East from the Gulf of Mexico and has many fishing holes. My husband and his cousin fish in various places, one of which is called "Uncle David's Fishing Hole."  Many memories have been created there.

I did my usual toning of the canvas of yellow ochre and under painted the areas of green with red.  I probably should have started from the back with a grayish green in the foliage but didn't anticipate the issues in painting with the bright colors of yellows, oranges and bright pink.  I had to get a pattern of trees to start the painting and then work foliage among the trees.  It was pretty tough since the foliage covered parts of the branches.  I didn't want to overdo the branches or the trees.  It was a busy mess and I had to use two photos of the same scene to get the sky area offset from the center.  Also, I wanted the patches of river bank to lead into the painting and not have a major area dead center.  It was a back and forth type of painting - painting foliage for a while and then adding limbs in the right areas.

The idea is not to paint every leaf but to make patterns of leaves.  I felt I had to do both.  There were areas that had to be painted leaf by leaf.  There was too much color so that is when I mixed the grayish green to fill in areas between colors.  The limb across the painting in reds and pinks was not coming forward so I had to add more darks around it.  It was rather tedious actually.  I could paint this scene 20 times and it would be different every time.

The sky came last.  I knew I would have to cut into the foliage with sky holes.  But, what color of blue?  I got out one of my books by Kevin MacPherson called "Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light and Color".  He suggests that when you have such a spread of bright color, the sky needs to be more neutral and a little greyed.  He's right even though it was a beautiful bright blue sky in reality.