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Monday, September 19, 2011

The progression of a painting

Here I've just blocked in the sky and I have an undercoating of burnt sienna where the grass and road will go.  We've have had such beautiful sunsets lately I was inspired to paint this.  I didn't realize it would give me such grief or take so long.  The sky which was the inspiration was not the problem, it was the rest of the painting.

This is quite a bit later, but I got the silhouette trees, the house the road and the rocks in.  I also put some silver lining on the clouds.  At this point I wasn't unhappy with the painging, but it wasn't singing to me either. 


Here I added some small pine trees and begin the fence on the left.  The left side of the painting developed very nicely, but this is where I began to lose it on the right side of the road.

Here I'm working on the fence making the posts darker and giving them some highlights, but I added too many bushes on the right.  As this point I'm completely lost on that side of the painting.  I finished up the left side and then let it sit for several days while I did other things and thought it over.  I came back this morning and decided what I wanted to do, got busy on it and finally finished it.



This is the finished painting with the right side completely re-worked.  I made the pine trees larger, less groupings, but larger rocks, the grasses and weeds look better.  Sometimes a painting will absolutely kick you around as this one did for me. 

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About Me

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Ghent, Kentucky, United States
I'm a nature artist and I love to paint old barns, rivers and lakes, trees and fence rows and flowers. I work almost daily. You can purchase paintings by contacting me at slgraves6@gmail.com and there is also a tab across the top of my blog for available paintings and one for small paintings with buy now buttons. You can also purchase through my Etsy shop using the name of Fine Nature Art. . Thank you so much for stopping by.