A friend of mine bought his first house and asked me to do a painting for him. He took a photo along a stream that’s near his new place.
I was sort of having “virtual” art classes; that is, I would have about 10 minutes per week with my teacher where I would send her a photo of my progress and she would mark it up or tell me what to do to improve it. This painting ended up being right at the end of our last session before we stopped for the summer, so I got some input, but finished it up on my own.
I did have a little trouble getting started with this one. I was painting on a canvas larger than I had been in a while, and the subject matter was, I think, a bit more difficult than what I had been doing. And I was in a bit of a funk over another painting I had started that I got ‘stuck’ on. I still haven’t finished that one so it’s not posted on the blog yet.
This post is going to be photo-heavy. I took photos way more often than I would have if I had done this in class. Taking the photos helped me “see” the painting better, to see where I needed to improve things.
First, here is the photo he took:
And here we go with the ton of photos:
I found some bigger brushes that I had from before I started art class, so I decided to try using them to get things started. They helped a lot!
These next few may look the same but there are little details that I added so you’re going to have to look closely!
My teacher said I should add the white reflective bits in the water so I did:
Then she told me the reflective bits needed to “make sense” so I got rid of some of them.
She thought the little bush in front was too small and didn’t make sense so I beefed it up a bit.
A friend of mine in my art class thought the main big reflection in the water was a little too dark so I lightened it up. Here is the finished product! My friend liked it and said he couldn’t stop looking at it!
I got some palette knives so have been playing around with painting with them. When the one I’m working on is done I’ll do a post about it.