Humarock Paint Out

Red Boathouse

In a recent class we painted at Humarock.   It was cool and very windy, so I set up beside a building and some shrubs which provided a wind block.   I used my viewfinder to frame a scene which was the view to the west, across the South River toward a red boathouse on the other side.   The foreground grass prevented me from seeing the water.   I'm calling this as a landscape with water, but there was no water in view.

Initially, the result was somewhat disappointing and I felt the composition was the problem.   I had decided to leave out the little white house on the right.   By omitting it I had unbalanced what I had seen as a pretty good composition in the viewfinder.    When I got the painting back into the studio, I added the white house.  Voila - better.  If you cover up the white house with something dark and look at the painting, you will see how the weighting was too much to the left, despite the heavy dark cedar to the right.  

I also did the following things in revisiting this piece in the studio.  These are the benefits of working on a semi-dry painting:
1) I scumbled a light blue over the roof planes that were on a flatter angle, lightening the value.
2) I dry-brushed some paler red over the sunny sides of the red boathouse.   

Dry Grass Bristles

3) I took an old ruined brush and I pulled a few bristles out sideways.   I then dragged those perpendicular bristles through some Naples Yellow.   On the canvas, I just barely let the bristles touch in the shadowed areas of the boathouse and dragged down to the grass level.   This represents the wild, strawlike grass that is still erect in Spring before the new growth overtakes it.

I wish I had a before and after to show these changes, but I forgot to take the earlier picture.

Comments welcome.