Landscape 911

Last Meeting of the DPS...

The Dead Paintings Society is going on vacation until the autumn. We had our seventh, and final meeting of the spring/summer this past Friday, 29 June 2012.


The painting that was submitted for triage was 20x24. It suffered from a bit of a split personality. The sky seemed a bit sleety, yet it was clearly summer. The light on the trees suggested the sun lighting the picture from the right side. The far distantce, however, was yellow along the horizon. Go figure.

Both the darks and the lights suffered from a certain chalkiness. In the case of the darks, some opaque color has found its way into the mixtures, robbing them of their transparency and luminosity. In the the light areas, such as the meadow, there was a lack of vitality and richness.

Mostly I wanted to add some oomph to the colors, and to find away to invite the viewer into the painting. I didn't have quite enough time to do all I might have wanted. As it was, the class ran rather past its normal time. Today I changed it a bit. It's far from finished, but I think I've spent all the time I can on it. The photo doesn't show that there's a sliver of beach that arcs out into the water.

Below are two pairs of paintings from the 22 June 2012 DPS meeting, ones I failed to get posted at the time.

In this painting, I mostly wanted to get the water, and the peninsula, to lie down flat. I also wanted to increase the color range a bit. Not being happy with the house, nor with the chairs, they somehow disappeared.

Here's one where the artist wanted to stress the purple haze on a silvery day. But then she decided that a blue sky might be better. In fact, the blue sky robs the purple of most of its power. I decided to go with a high horizon, and to put the purple or a slope, running down to a pond.

Keep at it, and resuscitate some of your dead paintings. Be bold when you do it. There's nothing to lose, and a great deal to possibly gain.