Lake Reflections: Light and Colour

Lake Reflections: Light and Colour 

30" x 30" - acrylic on canvas 

I started this painting over a year ago, liking stages 1 and 2 but stopped at stage 3, because I was not sure exactly how I wanted to finish it. I liked parts but knew that other parts needed work.  In the last couple of weeks I have been trying to complete a few paintings that have been lingering, and once again turned my attention to this one. Stage 4 shows what I did with the trees and their colouring.

I finally concluded that I needed to balance the drama of the coloured reflections with a similar dark value in the rest of the water, which I did. It made pictorial sense, and I am very happy with the result. Cheers!

stage 4

stage 3

stage 2

stage 1

Shoreline Blues - a Daily Paintworks "Pick of the Day" on DPW-FB

Shoreline Blues

24" x 30" - acrylic on canvas - $400

In between drawing and painting views of Scotland (inspired by photos from a recent trip there) I have also been painting views inspired by my present location, at a cottage on a beautiful lake in Haliburton County, in northern 'cottage-country' Ontario. This painting is based on a photo I took from a canoe. 
                                                      
I worked on this painting after Highland Landscape and used a similar wet-into-wet-acrylic-wash technique to apply the paint and build up layers of colour as you can see in these progress photos. 

At this point I began to add more opaque colours and though it  appears less 'transparent' than Highland Landscape, some of that spontaneity has been maintained. I have been thinking about this particular scene and composition for a long time and am happy to have finally painted it (done!) and i am really happy with this way it turned out. I love the graphic nature of the composition, the abstracted reflection shapes, and the analogous colour palette. 

High Waters

High Waters

30" x 24"  - acrylic on canvas -SOLD

I have been living with this landscape for a few weeks now, and continue to really like it. It evolved in much the same way as my other landscapes: initially inspired by a photo reference, or a combination of visual ideas, and then just more painting, with thinking time between working sessions. 

The photos below will give you an idea of that progression.

I started with a very high horizon line, and broke down the "space" below into a variety of abstract shapes, essentially thinking it was 'land', but it felt very static and had very little value contrast. 

I decided to organize all the small land shapes into more distinct areas, so added some big curving lines that descended down from the right hand trees, and across the picture plane. I also began to experiment with colour and value. 

At this stage I really liked the overall patterning and palette, but it needed some pizzazz. I had already drawn into the painting with a dark acrylic marker which disappeared as I painted. To add emphasis, a greater level of abstraction and hopefully pizzazz, I  drew back into the composition with a white acrylic marker, but only in some areas. And once that happened, so did the magic. It moved from being a 'scape of descending hills to a 'scape of waves on water with trees reflections!   

Lake Reflections and the End of Summer

Lake Reflections

16" x 16"  -  acrylic on canvas  - SOLD

I actually finished this painting at the end of August, but never got around to posting it - so here it is - a reminder of summer, being near water, rocks and trees, of warm air and summer sounds. It's already feeling like long ago! 

Splash

Water Reflections: Splash
24" x 18"  acrylic on canvas  

This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

This is another painting that was almost finished when I stopped working on it several months ago, and one of the canvases I returned to last week. The title came easily as it names exactly what you see - a big splash in water. It was inspired by a detail from a photo of reflections in a water - a subject I find fascinating especially when removed from the original context - allowing for lots of painterly play and abstraction.

Coloratura

Coloratura

24" x 36" - acrylic on canvas
This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

I am fascinated by how reflections appear in water - and take photos of them, when and wherever I can. Coloratura is a variation on one of these designs, based on essentially a detail from a photo. Moody Blues, seen below, was the first variation based on this same detail. I could see so many more visual possibilities for these flowing abstract shapes, I knew that I would work with this same composition again, using more colour, or a different palette.

The fun thing about this new work is that when you rotate it, it also looks quite interesting......

The title Coloratura is a musical term  'generally used to describe vocal music that is extensively ornamented and calls for ability in a very high register'. I thought it fit here too.

The Evolution of a Painting - Day 1

Who cannot look at a lily pond and not think of light, colour, art and of course Claude Monet. Monet (1840–1926) painted approximately 250 oil paintings featuring water-lilies or Nymphéas, and were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. In May, I was in Paris for a few days and saw the cycle of eight water-lily painting murals at the Musée de l'Orangerie. 

It was interesting to see how large they actually are - 6.5 feet tall and if lined up side by side, 298 feet in width. As I walked back and forth, moving in close to see the texture and build up of paint, then stepping back to see how one area appeared, then moving in again and along the canvas I was not only impressed with the vision of symphonic colour, but the physical demands that painting even one such enormous canvas would have demanded from a younger person, let alone an man already elderly.  

But I am digressing.....

I came across a lily pond in Florida a couple of years ago - it was really a raised circular concrete pool with tropical vegetation surrounding it - and because the light was right and the colours of the flowers, water and lily pads, and the reflections were so interesting, I took lots of photos. I eventually painted two works inspired by the photos, and recently had another look through the collection, and saw some potential for a new composition in a 'detail' from the photo above.

detail

I chose a large canvas -  48" x 48" - as I wanted to depict the subject larger than life. I love painting big and was excited to start, so quickly sketched on the image and began to paint, selecting a palette that basically followed what I saw in the photo. Big canvases require a lot of paint and application work and getting essentially one layer of colour everywhere took several hours - by which time it looked like this.

day 1

I felt that it was a good start but I could also see the problems that would face me the next day. I already didn't like the shape of the larger lily pads. They were fine in the photo, but despite drawing them fairly accurately, they did not look right on the canvas. Then there were the other bits in the bottom right corner......it was a good time to stop and sleep on it.

Moody Blues

Moody Blues

24" x 36"  - acrylic on canvas  

This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

I have been fascinated by the shapes and patterns of 'reflections' in water for quite some time, and take photos of them whenever I can. Once back in the studio I play with those images on the computer, isolating and cropping to find interesting abstract compositions. Once found I reduce, eliminate, exaggerate the image through a series of sketches and then continue that process on the canvas. This painting is the result of that kind of process, and for once - I stopped before it looked too polished! As someone who loves colour, it was a challenge to work with a limited and muted palette - but I love the subtlety of colours and the way the blue, green and violets paint hues muddied when they intermixed with the charcoal and pastel used to draw the surface patterning.  

Midnight Magic Painting - More Imagination than Reality

Midnight Magic

24" x 36"  acrylic on canvas 

This painting, like so much of my work, is based on a photo. In this case it was one that I took at my cottage one fabulous afternoon in late May, several years ago. The day was unseasonably warm, and the blue blue sky was full of big, fluffy clouds. Their perfect reflection in the calm lake water was amazing, and the stillness made the moment magical.

I have tried to paint this scene several times, but, despite loving the memory of the day and place, found the relentless symmetry, ultimately uninteresting. I realized that what I really wanted to paint were the reflections in the water, and continue to explore this subject in an abstracted, stylized way. Boldness and imagination seemed in order.....thus the photo became a point of departure.

I started this 'new' work last spring, envisioning a very different scene from the photo view - with a dramatic night sky and an even more dramatic interpretation of the water and reflections. The latter, as you can see, is highly imagined, and was great fun to paint. However, but it took all summer to figure out what to do with the sky. Originally I had sketched in some simplified clouds, but they just seemed to take up space and look wrong. When I returned to this canvas a few days ago I worked at the clouds for a while but they didn't improve, so then I painted them out and had an aha! moment, realizing that a simpler cloudless sky would work much better (whether it makes sense logically doesn't really matter), and offer a perfect visual counterpoint to the wild water below. And I think it does, quite successfully.

More Reflections on Water

This is the second abstract painting inspired by reflections on water. I started with a detail from a photo (posted yesterday) I took at a park in Berlin two years ago and then played. As you can see (if comparing) different palette and different brushwork - but the same compositional concern for balance, rhythm, variety and dominance is there.
I quite like this one too and find it visually intriguing the more I look at it - like look at water.

Water Reflection Abstract Two

16" x 16" acrylic in canvas

This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

Abstracting from Nature - Reflections on Water

Water Reflection Abstract One

16" x 16" acrylic on canvas

SOLD

I am all jumping all over the place these days in terms of what I am painting - including dogs, people, flowers, landscapes and now abstract works. I have never really been a very linear-minded person, so working exclusively in one mode on one subject over a period of time is not, despite good intentions, really me. What I have found is that after some time (months, years) I have a body of work that can be divided into subsets or series that show a similar painting focus and aesthetic interest. I make no apologies as I enjoy the creative freedom to switch and play with new motifs and ways of interpretation. 

Over the last few days I have been working on two paintings - both of which were inspired by the patterns, shapes and colours of reflections in water. My starting point for each was a small detail from a photo that provided the initial composition structure, and after that it was all about colour, shape, line, value, rhythm, balance, and the pleasure of moving paint around. I am really happy with this first one. As I look at it on my wall, I find it quite  visually satisfying. Unfortunately the photo does not do it full justice, as it's difficult to see the layers of colours, and the yellow, while intense, is more buttery than it may appear here - but you get the idea.

Here is the photo from which the detail came - can you find it?