Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Same Old Haunts


Phantom Bluff 16x20 oil

The Paint Out in Lake Oswego is only a few days away now, and there isn't much time left to sharpen up my dull blade of a skill in plein air painting, so I scamper down to the boathouse to paint yet again the familiar scene.  There is always something different about it; at the very least the surface of the water changes throughout the day.  But it also seems like I'm painting the same painting over and over again.  I make an effort to simplify, get rid of extraneous detail, focus on values, try to direct the attention from here to there.  The morning light hits the bare rock on the bluff and brings out the pinks and mauves and the rusts and mint greens of lichen, and maybe one day I will be able to match those colors and find a place for them in a painting, but for now the struggle is just to find the right greens to differentiate the far and the near evergreens.

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