Returning to Oil: 4.0
This past Saturday was my last oil-painting class, and I have finished the fourth version of this landscape. My instructor assures me this is the best version yet.
This was a paint-from photograph class, and as you can see (I append the original photograph at the bottom here) I have wandered far. Furthermore, I infected the rest of the class; others began suddenly casting reality to the winds, making seasides sunny, adding multicolored fields of flowers, etc.
However, in this fourth effort I think I have balanced better the overwhelming tendency to green and Naples yellow. It helps, I think, to have a completely different color as the under-painting — all that purple and blue still peeps through a lot, lending the thing more depth than the straight slapping down of green which can be viewed in versions 1 and 2. And that is a valuable tool. I must remember (if and when I go further with oils) to never begin with the work as it looks, or as it is going to look. First I must bounce up and down on the trampoline with some purer, zanier hue. (I have an awful lot of purple paint in my box at this moment.) Only after that dries, do I execute a back flip as a thin layer of reality goes on!
2 thoughts on “Returning to Oil: 4.0”
That’s a beautiful painting and does I think convey the spirit of the original, although there is no purple to be seen in it. I had always assumed that painters did somehow see colours that I don’t, but from what you say that’s not the case. Your painting isn’t a copy of the photo but an independent artwork.
Yes! If you simply want to capture an image, photography is better. The goal of painting is to render the emotional impact of what you see. And that’s surprisingly hard to do.