Tuesday, February 13, 2007

At The Farm Market

At The Farm Market 12" x 9" acrylic on canvas

I had a lot of fun painting making this painting. I enjoyed the large shadow and the dappled sunlight on the drive. This scene is of rural Ontario, Canada and is of a farm where in the fall offers horse & wagon rides and among other things has a farm market selling their harvest of fruit & vegetables.
The painting is done from my photo reference, but when I take a reference photo, I spend a great deal of time framing the composition, so it is very close to how I envisioned the painting when I was there. This painting is all about values of color. I started the painting by using a thin wash of burn umber and simply drawing with the brush right on the canvas. Then with the same color, I blocked in my darks. From there I carefully added the local colors, and changed values as I went to get it right. I painted the shapes that I saw, and then slowing the painting began to focus. I never want to be a camera, or do a camera's job, so I paint with a loose but controlled impressionist brush style. This to me captures a feel of the scene that cannot be equaled with a camera.

2 comments:

Ed Terpening said...

Nice work. The casualness of the composition fits the subject perfectly.

Cecelia said...

Very nice. I liked your explanation of your process. Capturing everyday life is so interesting. In years to come, styles will be different, the things that are ordinary today will not even be in existance in the future, and photos of those things often get lost over the years. I've been trying to remember things that were ordinary in the past, or things that I had photos of but lost, and preserving those through art. Enjoyed your work.
Cecelia
http://cecelia-throughmyeyes.blogspot.com/