Worked in the Okanagan back country today. What an amazing world we live in. All these various flowers are growing just steps from each other and in abundance across the hillsides. The challenge of painting a landscape in this environment is deciding how to simplify this beautiful chaos of color into a pleasing composition that captures the spirit of the time and place without overloading our senses.Hills that appear generally green when viewed casually transform into an explosion of color as your eyes adjust to the different values. You will observe artists squinting frequently as they try to reduce the visual noise down into a melody or ballad.
Squinting is a good way to simplify values too. Try it sometime, close down your eyes until your lashes create a veil that reduces a very busy scene into several simple shapes. This little excercise helps you to establish the framework or bones of your painting.
My buddy Cal worked on several small watercolours of trees that he's going to base an oil painting on. I started a 24X24 oil that I was able to block in today and will return to continue working on asap. I've posted this initial layin and will share this painting when its completed.
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