It’s the 4th of January, 2024 my toes are still numb after my first plein air session of the year. It was humid, chilly, and windy but the sun was shining which always seems to lift my spirits and helps me ignore the winter bite.
I always get into a bit of creative slump during the holidays because it’s so busy and all my focus is on life stuff. And the harsh weather makes staying inside far too comfortable. I lose my connection to nature a little bit. So as the new year comes around I really need to force myself to go out until it starts to feel normal again.
Sometimes all it takes is a walk around the neighborhood.
I didn’t go far, just wandered down the forest path until something caught my eye. I pass this tree often and in the afternoon light there are beautiful shadows dancing over the old bark. It always draws me in because of the beautiful twisted vines climbing up the trunk, and I felt it would be a great subject to dust off my creative cobwebs.
After observing the scene for a moment, I decided on a small composition, allowing me to focus on the thing that caught my eye at first: shadow shapes under green leaves.
Knowing I only had about 30 minutes before my head, shoulders, knees and toes would be frozen, I got to work setting up my Etchr Slate mini satchel onto my tripod and unpacking my kit.
As usual I brought my Portable Painter filled with gouache, which was very dry after some weeks of neglect. However with a few drops of water the paint turned soft again and I got to work.
My first step was to lay in the background in order to define the edges of the tree. I settled on a neutral grey tone to keep it very simple which will help draw focus to the tree itself. If I had used bright colors in the background there would be too much distraction, especially in such a small painting. The smaller the painting, the more simplified things need to be to read well.
One of my new favorite colors is buff titanium, and that alone could have been used for the bark highlights. I added just a hint of pink and yellow here and there for some variety. I wanted the highlights to be warm next to the cool blue shadows. Sometimes I use pure blue for the shadows but this time I was trying to be a little more realistic. A little.
Color isn’t as important as getting the values correct. So in order for those shadows to make sense, I need to make sure they are dark enough behind the leaves, which come later.
There were lots of little bits of extreme dark that I didn’t add to my painting. I thought it would have been too confusing
These quick studies outside teach me so much. And I learn even more when I go back to the studio and paint it again (and again).
Watch the Video:
Happy New Year 🙂