For the month of May the Virtual Paintout gang went to the city of Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic.
I fell in love with the countryside in the South Bohemian Region, and when I saw a field of baled hay, I imagined that Claude Monet, the famous Impressionist painter who painted LOTS of hay bales, surely must have visited here! So here's my painting, in honor of Monet, an artist I greatly admire.
I call my painting "End of a Well Spent Day".
Leonardo da Vinci said:
" As a well spent day brings happy sleep,
so a life well spent brings a happy death."
The dignity and honor of good old fashioned hard work.
Peace and contentment.
The end of a good day.
Headin' in to supper with Family.
A well spent day.
My original location:
(can click on any pics to enlarge)
A black and white version to study
the values before starting:
My set up and first sketching-in:
Oh! Guess what?
I finally bought a little tablet to use for my reference photos!
So now I don't have to keep running back and forth to my
desktop computer, or print out dull and dark paper references.
It's a Polaroid 10.1 inch tablet. A TON cheaper than an iPad.
But it gets the job done for my purposes. Here you can see the
color mock-up that I played around with in photoshop:
Starting the underpainting here:
Decided to switch directions, and have fun experimenting
with something I read about in the Susan Sarback book
"Capturing Radiant Light & Color":
painting in the sunshine and shadow colors first:
Adding variations to the colors:
A couple of close ups:
And the finished painting:
"End of a Well Spent Day"
Cesky Krumlov
South Bohemian Region
Czech Republic
6 x 12 acrylic
on wrapped canvas
(prints, greeting cards and more available
Happy painting,
Retta
