And Now for Something Different

Not all landscape drawings and paintings need to be totally realistic. Many of the best are far from it. They give only the impression of the landscape. Or the idea or are simply inspired by and area. The idea takes on a life of its own.

In drawing, this is more than true. You are representing a landscape, but of necessity, editing and changing it. With pencils things are reduced to grayscale. With pen and ink, literally black and white, or simply tinted and stylized.

Greenbottom and Lotus Painting as of March 3

  

Painting the misty colors and feel of Greenbottom in mid summer haze it a challenge. I don’t want it to look foggy. It was hazy but hot and wet. So humid just walking through the air left you wet.

I am finally beginning to get some of the color and feel I want. The background was still too vivid and bright. I did paint a thin glaze of red over the background hills, which is beginning to take them down a bit.

 

Most efforts to “gray” them out left them looking rather rainy and cold not at all what is needed here.

The smaller canvas of the lotus is beginning to look like the flower and leaf, with the leaf half under the water.

For such shallow water it was remarkably dark. Totally shaded by the immense field of lotus.

Updates On The Greenbottom Work

I know I promised you lots of updates on the Greenbottom/ West Virginia wetlands series I want to do, but the work has been going slowly. Yes, oils take a longer time to set up between sessions, but I have also been doing a lot of procrastinations.

Finding time has been a problem, or rather the energy when I have time. Finally, this week I broke down and saw the doctor (now I really am broke! Boy was it expensive!) She gave me some new meds to reduce the inflammation and reduce pain. Now, this is strong stuff, and she made it clear I am not staying on it.

But boy, what a difference a day makes! I had not realized how much strength was being sapped by pain until I realized last night, after 3 hours of catching up on laundry, sorting through and putting away bags of books and art supplies, etc that I still felt like painting a bit.

Although I only worked for a little over and hour, I worked. Progress on both paintings, laid out two more pieces I will be doing in pen and ink and sorted through references for a couple of pencil drawings. There is a lot of work to do, but it no longer seems impossible.