Bay Farm Tree

Bay Farm in Kingston, MA is located on Kingston Bay, offering painters and nature lovers a scenic and easily accessible area.  Shorebirds, ducks, songbirds, and birds of prey all share fields, woods, and the shore of Bay Farm. The secluded shoreline along Kingston Bay can be reached by following the wide, grassy path that leaves the parking area and cuts through the main field, heading directly eastward toward the ocean. The vegetation and wildflowers in the field attract a wide assortment of butterflies and birds.

There was a steady stream of visitors to the parking lot, mostly with dogs.   The more scenic views are at the shore, but I wasn't up for trudging a half mile, only to then be a little nervous about being alone,  especially since there was something to paint just standing at the car.  I set up my easel adjacent to the parking lot and faced west, looking across the road to a field bordered by a ranch style fence and guarded by this venerable maple.

Result after Bay Farm Paint Out

Spring buds on bare branches gave the vegetation a washed out look of pale pink, pale green, and pale gray hues. Dry grasses from last year on the left stoo dout against the darker shrubs behind them. The field grasses were a variety of greens, from pale bluish green in the distant clearing, to gold-green in the mid-distance, to rusty gold and green in the foreground.

The center of interest, obviously, is the big old maple.  At one point, I noticed that I really liked the shadows on the thick left lower bough. Upper tree branches had cast zebra shadows and even the trunk had some interesting elongated shadows. I locked in these shadows and no matter that they continued to change, I was going to stick with them.

Bay Farm Tree

When I came back to the painting one week later in the studio, I used a reference photo to fine tune and finish the painting.   Admittedly I took artists' license with the heightened color on the tree trunk.  The real thing was too gray.   I mixed up some naples yellow, cad red deep and some of my sky mixture and used that to apply highlights.   I used this warm highlight mixture more toward the bottom of the tree and most especially when a lit branch was crossing a cool dark background color, like the evergreen trees in the distance.  The highlight color had less warmth in it on the upper branches;  the sky light seemed to wrap itself around the upper branches and rob them of any warm color.

As I take stock of the "final" product, I am thinking that it would be nice to do this scene in each of the four seasons.   There - I said it, so I probably will.