"Painting An Oil Plein Air Scene- Armstrong Creek"
Page 3 of 4
Author: Larry_Seiler, Contributing Editor
| I will save any details as a finishing step, and I am concerned about how my work comes together as a whole. Thus..I am also frequently squinting my eyes at my own work. Doing so amounts to the same as taking a couple paces back to judge your work, and you get a sense of what the viewer will see when first seeing and walking up to the painting. I also judge my colors by looking at adjacent areas to sense their strength and effect. |  |
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| I like my knife. It picks up paint quickly, has- a point, an edge, and larger flat area to apply paint. It cleans easily with one swipe of a rag. I begin by sculpting the foilage with space that surrounds it, or the negative space. |
| Some do not know that there is a difference between a painting knife and a palette knife. The former is more delicate and used for painting, the latter for mixing color on the palette. I find it effective for sculpting masses to suggest shapes such as trees, foilage, and brush. Here, I'm using sky color to poke thru the tree masses, thereby suggesting breaks in limbs or...the illusion of pines. |  |
 | Squint your eyes here to see what I saw- shapes beginning to come together and appear as trees. This is really so simple, yet so many do it the hard way. They try to paint every branch, which requires them to become experts on trees. Really though, think of it. We only need to be artists expert at recognizing shapes and color. If we imitate the shapes, the illusion will come together in the viewer's mind to say, "trees!" |
| Well, here it is...the end of the session. I used the brush and knife to suggest patterns in the water, and the edge of the knife to literally slash in brush and branches. Approximately an hour and a half had passed, and it was getting dark. The warm air had changed to a chill. My dog was letting me know she was ready to go home. I had captured the spirit of the scene, satisfied I discovered the "ah-HAH!" and was ready to be done. |
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