Friday, May 29, 2015

Virtual Paintout 25: Painting Sunshine & Shadows!


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