Painting Sky Holes

This is a phenomenon that is well known amongst outdoor painters but if you are just starting out it is another tool you can use to create effective landscapes. If you are not a painter then this is trivia. Interesting though, when you look around and see it happening everywhere.

Wherever there is a cluster of branches, wires, sailing boat masts or what have you grouped closely together they will obscure the sky that you are observing through them, effectively darkening it a level or two.


Our minds know that the clouds behind this tree that I photographed in my yard this morning is the same overall value. Interesting that our eyes read the small sky holes as a lower value. To create a believable sky I will grey down the smaller sky holes, the smaller the hole , the darker the value.



Here's the painting of an Amaryllis that I did last week. Blossoms are fun to paint and I can see why painters like to do huge canvases filled with giant blossoms.



I'll be involved in a show at the Little Straw Winery in West Kelowna this April. I'll keepyou posted as the date approaches.

Until next time...............

Design

I'm rounding the half way point in my portrait project now. My objective has been to learn about painting people in the process of working through 100 portraits in a year. I've imposed on myself parameters in order to keep the pieces consistent and the trajectory even. Like any endeavor, the more you work at it the faster you become. The temptation, for myself, is to pull out ever smaller tools and pursue detail.

For my work that will be fatal. Ultimately I want the piece to carry the strength that considered and expressive visible brushwork achieves. Too much rendering of detail denies mystery and poetry.
I'm choosing to put more energy into the design of each painting. I will be disciplined in time management and stay within my arbitrary guidelines for the sake of the series. You readers and sitters can hold me accountable.

Connie D. , below, tried on a few scarves of various colours knotted differently. I decided to keep the colour subdued and I pulled the fabric (in my mind) off to the left. I think the result is pleasing and has a comfortable but slightly unbalanced flow.



This week I am working on a commissioned floral painting. I have to work from a photo I took of a brief blooming. It is certainly a departure from my portraits and landscapes. I will share the result with you however it may turn out.

A Sense of Place

There is a real joy in the painting life. You have opportunity to enter a place, rest within it and respond however it directs you. The longer you spend engaged with your senses attuned to nature the more she offers up.

This scene is about the ambiant heat of an Okanagan day. It's about the pine with their lower branches blackened from summer fires and it's about the soft needle blanketed ground. It's about dust obscured atmosphere, heavy with heat.

This is the lure of landscape painting, particularly solitary work in the wild. It's a kind of meditation with the divine. It resets your perspective on your place within nature and before your Creator.


I started this painting last summer high in the hills above our lake. It sat in my studio until this winter. I rearranged the composition for a pleasing visit to a familiar place.