Got Geese!

After several days of studying the painting, I began to get some ideas of what to do to move it along. I shortened the log and changed the shoreline in the foreground as well as on the left and in the background. I think this gives the water a more natural, random shape than before and in a vague way, it sort of echos the shapes in the sky which adds interest.

I finally decided where the geese should go...on the right in the middle distance. It's just a small family group - from the turning leaves on the left shore, you can tell it's very late summer so the family's goslings are nearly adult size. These geese behaved like wild geese when I was shooting the reference photos. As soon as they spotted me, they began moving off into the water, toward the far shore. This is very different from the local Mal-Wart geese that hang out around the local mall. When the fields were bulldozed to make way for the mall, the existing wetlands and ponds were retained to handle the storm water runoff from the acres and acres of pavement and roofs. The wetlands attract quite a variety of waterfowl and it's a great area to get fairly close-up photos. But the resident geese have learned that where there are people, there is food - people stop and throw them chunks of bread and bagels from the local Panera Bread place.

I love Canada geese. I think they're very striking, elegant creatures but I know a lot of people hate them because they poop all over golf courses and other areas where they congregate. (Officials think it was a couple of Canada geese that brought down that jet into the Hudson a couple weeks ago.) I guess I don't understand "hating" geese or deer or any other wild creature. It's human activity and development that has created so much ideal habitat for these species; our never-ending suburban sprawl has forced them to live among us. The geese and deer are just doing what comes naturally in the only spaces they have left: our gardens and mall marshes and putting greens. We're the ones that have created the problem but I guess folks afflicted with nature deficit disorder will never understand that.

Still thinkin'...

I've come to one conclusion about my painting...the log is too long. It'll be a few days before I have any chance to make changes, but I've pretty much decided that the log will lose a couple feet out there near the water.

Now THIS is a Sunset!

Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860
Frederic Edwin Church 1826 -1900
Oil on canvas, 40" x 64"

"Twilight in the Wilderness marks the culmination of Church's passion for the American wild. A technical and imaginative tour de force, it brought to a climax the series of New England sunset paintings, including Twilight, 'Short Arbiter 'Twixt Day and Night' (1850) and Mount Ktaadn (1853), that had preoccupied Church throughout his career, and provides perhaps his definitive attempt to encapsulate American national identity in a single canvas."

-Andrew Wilton & Tim Barringer, American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820-1880 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002) 129-131.

(The colors in the above image are a little dull; a much better reproduction appears in the book.)

Hmmmm...

Well, another couple of sessions has brought it to this point:


I've entirely reworked the clouds and really punched up the highlights on the edges. Also did some work on the water, to try and tone it down in keeping with the evening light. In the reference, there's not a lot of contrast, but most of the shallows along the shore is a lovely peach color while the water is blue/gray/violet.

It's hard to see in the image, but I also did quite a lot to the foreground. Not sure how I feel about the log right now. I know I'll like it better when the paint is dry but compositionally...I don't know. My usual solution to a problem like this is to put the painting in a spot where I walk by it frequently and then just pay attention to my reaction. If I find that something(s) in the painting annoys the heck out of me every time I look at it, I know that thing needs fixing. And a lot of times a solution presents itself this way too.

Really old weathered logs turn a bright silvery gray so I had to highlight the top considerably. I think the value along the top is about right for an old log, but it may be too light for the foreground of the painting, attracting too much attention. If that turns out to be the case, I'll just glaze it to darken the value a bit.

A couple times today, I got the feeling that there needs to be something else over to the left foreground too. Giant rock (aka "glacial erratic")? Shrub? Bush? Tree? Hmmm...gotta think on it for awhile.

And Even More Progess!

January 6: Foreground! Went through my reference, looking for a good log to use as a compositional device - something to break up the boring foreground and act as a visual lead-in.

Now that the area I worked on two days ago is drying, the glare is disappearing, and you can see it better. The mountain isn't actually in the photos but you can't do an Adirondack painting without a mountain! I mean, really! Now it has to dry thoroughly before I can do any more on it. The log needs to be lightened, since it's old and weathered silver. I also need to do more work on the vegetation on the foreground, adding some hardhack shrubs (a native spirea) and grasses. The log also needs to be in the grass, not on it. And of course the sky and water need work. But hey, it's starting to look like a painting! For what it's worth, my palette after I finished painting today - lotsa greens, blues and violets.

More Progress!

January 5: Tall trees on right. More wet paint, so more glare. Note the orange cast on the branches of the left hand white pine...the beginning of the sun that is glaring through in the photos. It's a neat effect and I'm going to see what I can do with it when I revist the sky after everything is dry. I've got 37 reference photos for this (really!), but it's coming together I think. So far so good anyway.

Progress!

January 4: worked on the far and left shore today. Paint is wet, so it's got some glare but that will disappear as it dries. I always like my paintings better after the paint is dry. I don't use any medium as I paint, at least not in these early stages so it all dries pretty matte.