Painting The Howe Sound
This painting took me 2 sessions to complete on location. In fact however, it took me 5 previous paintings spread out over the course of a week to get myself ready to execute this one. 3 were okay, 1 was…I will say, ‘Interesting’, and the 5th piece before I began this larger work was one of my best.
It had been a few weeks since I had been out painting. I was curious as I started the week to see if I was going to be able to see any improvements since I did a month of dedicating myself to painting earlier in the spring. But it did take me a few days to get warmed up again. And yes, I definitely can see the improvements coming through in my work which is nice.
I would like to get to the point where I can Trust that when I set up to do a painting, that it is likely I will be walking away with a nice piece, where at this stage it is still hit and miss, though I seem to enjoy myself equally each time even if a painting doesn’t come together.
I started this piece around 12:30 in the afternoon. I had spent the morning on the beachfront painting a massive piece of driftwood and shivering in the wind which was coming across the Howe Sound pretty strong.
For the afternoon I decided to do something larger. The day before I came across a nice spot that I thought would be good to set up and do a larger painting and so I decided this was what I was going to do. I grabbed 2 larger canvases with slightly different dimensions and thought I would see which one would work better once I got there.
It was HOT out and there was slightly less wind where I was going to be setting up. I felt mostly focused for the day. I got everything set up and found some small boulders to place in the back of my easel so the wind wouldn’t catch my canvas like a sail and blow it over which it had already done once.
I started with the sky and clouds and it went on pretty quickly and then moved into the mountains.
After about 3 hours on the first day I was slowing down a bit and noticed my concentration was waning so I decided to pack up and call it day.
Everything worked out great in the painting on day 1 but I still had half of the piece to go.
When I woke up today it was more cloudy and I debated if I should do a warm up painting before I head out to the location to set up the big piece. I was torn, I wanted to paint around the same time as I did the day before but I also wanted to have my full reserve of concentration to finish this piece off.
I decided to head up to paint the larger one.
Once I got there, there was definitely more clouds and although the sun was about 3 hours positionally different than the day before, because the scene was such a large expanse it didn’t affect things too much, besides I had already painted the mountains which would have been affected most by the sun.
I looked into the sky and saw a big opening of blue sky which I equated to about an hour and half of fairly steady sun. I decided I would do the trees first as I thought it would be easier to paint the water around the trees afterwards.
I began painting and even though the light did hold pretty well for the first portion of the day, it was still fluctuating quite a bit. I moved from left to right painting both light and shadow of each tree as I moved across the canvas.
Another artist popped by who I had met the day before to see my progress. I don’t often see other artists out painting but it was real treat to have a quick chat with this guy. I find as I get older and spend more time doing art that I experience more of a kinship with other artists. He had brought a painting with him to show me. I thought it was great. More interpretive than mine and hopefully will inspire me as I move into my future work to integrate and develop this ‘interpretive’ side to my work which I kind of see as something natural that will develop. At this stage I spend my plein air painting time being mostly ‘true to nature’ to a degree until I am satisfied with my ability to do this and to understand the Structure of translating what I see with my eyes, and mind, into color and paint. At this point I try and see as direct as possible and not interpret to much, Although its kind of unavoidable and I know my paintings have my signature all over them.
After the chat with the artist it was time to put in the water which would Make or Break the painting. As harsh as that sounds, I find that a good painting works everywhere, you can’t have one element that is not working with the whole. I mean, you can, but the painting is normally best when all parts are working together and that is what I am going for.
As soon as I began painting the water these massive dark purply-blue shadows came dropping out of the sky and onto the surface of the ocean. Everytime I looked up the shadows would be different and they seemed to be constantly moving and shifting across the water the entire time. I just went with it and managed to capture this fantastic color combination of purple shadow contrasted against bright green water.
When I envisioned painting the water, I envisioned a much calmer process. Lol. I got the opposite! Another testament how things in the mind are often nothing like how they turn out in reality. In reality, painting the water was the most hectic part of the painting and what I got versus what I envisioned was Much Better and totally dynamic with a beautiful pattern of large dark purple and brilliant green shapes interlocking like a puzzle to form the impression of water.
It worked! Lol.
The painting was a success. One of my largest plein air pieces to date, and definitely one of my best.
I packed up and headed home to photograph the work, drink a cappuccino, and write this blog.
