I gave myself a couple of assignments. The best clouds in my paintings were complete accidents, so I tried a painting of just clouds. It would’ve been easier if I had chosen a single thunderhead over a desert. Instead, I chose a photo I had taken myself just down the street. Of course, I’m deluding myself. I’m sure the thunderhead would’ve brought its own headaches. However, you can see from my process shots how much I was flailing around. It was the opposite of the experience of my last painting.
The sun was behind the hill. I especially wanted to capture the way its light illuminated the lower clouds from within. I felt a bit lost, but not panicked.
This process shot is deceiving only because there were at least two other re-workings, both as different from each other as the two you see here. I finally focused on one cloud at a time. I gave myself permission to not copy the clouds in the photos, but to use them for information only.
I added the tree which was in the photo. I wasn’t concerned with composition. I wanted to practice painting tree branches <shrug>. People like the painting but it has none of the feeling of the original photo. On one hand, it’s fun to play with the “happy accidents” that occur while painting. In theory, I’m doing this for my enjoyment. I don’t have a client with specific expectations. But I want to paint with an objective in mind and achieve it, whether it’s painting the same cloud as photographed, or creating an art piece with a specific mood.
A wonderful weekend visit by my son’s family interrupted my streak of painting at least once a week. Hugging a grandchild for the first time in a year and a half lifted spirits immensely. So I skipped a week with absolutely no guilt at all. But I was eager to dive back in with a “simpler” subject. I photographed a row of palm trees in a parking lot, cropping it to fit my sketchbook's page format.
In an effort to approach the painting with a plan, I traced simplified light and shadow shapes of the trees. I roughed in the sky and started laying in darks. I didn't use a wash on the sky because I knew that I'd be using the sky color to cut into the silhouettes of the trees to suggest light coming through the branches. A thin watercolor wash wouldn't let me do that.
If I had painted this pleine air instead of using a photo, I would've had a better understanding of the basic forms of the tree, and how to emphasize the light direction. At this stage, the center tree suggests I knew what I was doing. If the other two looked like it, the next step would have been to add color accents, then finish with the sky color cut-ins. Instead, I got lost in the fronds.
I think two of the trees are decent and the third looks unfinished. Again, a better understanding of the tree structure, or more patience on my part, and I would have laid in highlights and shadows that sold the three dimensional shapes of the trees.