Speaking of Art Blog

Autumn Lace, pastel, 9x12"

This is my newest pastel that I created.  With the changing colors of leaves being so vibrant his fall, I have enjoyed walking in several woodsy areas near our home at the southern tip of Lake Michigan.  One of them is Brincka Cross Gardens.  The trees on the property are varied and unique.  I have no idea what type of tree this is, but it looks very old to me.  Its tons of branches extend out in all directions.  I took my reference photo while standing underneath the tree and looking up.  I do that often while I walk in the woods – I look up.

Since I work back to front when I create a painting, meaning things out in the distance come first and then I work my way down to the foreground at the bottom, the colored leaves against the sky needed to go in first.  Well, at least the general colors back there needed to go in first.  So, I tried something new.  I put my general color markings in place with no preliminary drawing, then I spritzed the paper with a fine mist of water, I let that dry (which toned the paper and made those colors permanent), and then I finally drew all the branches and the trunk with a charcoal pencil.  Then I started in the upper left corner like I usually do, and I added all the little leaf markings with soft pastels.  Sometimes I covered up branches with leaves, which is fine because sometimes leaves do cover up our view of branches, and sometimes I reinforced some branches so that they would stand out again.

It all worked out very nicely, as well as I had envisioned.  What I stopped and asked myself at the end was something that may sound weird, but here it is: “Did I honor that particular old tree?”

You see, trees are important on this Earth.  They are a living thing and their trunk and branches tell the story of their life.  I could tell that this one had been through a lot in its lifetime.  Its twisted large branches and many of its short, dark, skinnier branches that could no longer support new leaves each year, give this tree its unique character.  And what glorious color it produces every fall!  Standing under that tree and looking up took my breath away.  Does my painting also take my breath away?  If so, then it honors that old tree.

What I noticed about the colors I saw while standing under it, was that at the brightest spots in the foliage, the yellow color was so washed out that you could barely tell the leaves right there were even yellow.  Those spots were simply bright because of the intense sunshine piercing right through the leaves.  So, I used white in those few spots with no details added whatsoever, and that worked.  I purposely kept the whole piece very impressionistic with dots and scribbles of color because, just as with the paintings by the Impressionists like Claude Monet, I went after evoking a feeling of awe.  Did I succeed?  I think I did. 

I also hope that when people see an image of this painting on social media or in an exhibit, they will maybe pause the next time they take a walk in the woods, and stop to look up.  Hopefully they will discover a unique tree to get to know better.  Trees are cool; they help us breathe and they produce good food for us to enjoy, and they enable us to build houses and make paper and do a million other things that I cannot even think of right now.  I know one thing for sure – every fall I look forward to visiting this particular tree, to stand under it, look up, and gasp with delight at its beauty.  This painting is a way to honor it.

In northern Indiana where I live, the colors of the trees as they change in the fall right now have been astonishingly beautiful this year.  Most days I’m out hiking and taking loads of pics.  Yesterday and today were interesting because I hiked on the same trail in the same woods, but with two different lighting situations.  Yesterday was bright but overcast.  Today was super sunny without a cloud in the sky.

When I go hiking and picture taking on a cloudy day, I have noticed that colors are more vivid.  They don’t get washed out by direct sunlight.  There’s a consistency among the colors throughout a whole scene.  That’s because the light is bouncing off the clouds and is diffused in a consistent manner through the atmosphere.  Shadows barely exist.

Today was very different.  The sun was shining brightly into the woods at a slant as I went hiking late in the afternoon.  The light filtered through the trees and hit the leaves and ground in a random fashion.  Some leaves were in full sunlight while many plants and ground cover were only illuminated with dappled light.  Shadows were dramatic.  Some leaves were all washed out by direct sunlight while others were very dark because they were in shadow.  But the most interesting leaves were the ones that were being illuminated by the sun hitting them from behind.  They glowed with almost neon color from backlighting.  The overall coloring of leaves and trees was not consistent at all.  It all depended on how much or how little light was hitting any one leaf or tree or plant.

When I go out looking for good photo opportunities, I don’t try to figure out in advance what will work.  The lighting outdoors each day determines everything.  If it’s a cloudy day, then I look for vivid colors that stand out.  If it’s a sunny day, I look for light/dark drama and backlit plants, leaves, flowers, and even wildlife.  So, when I went out hiking yesterday and today, it wasn’t surprising to me that I did NOT take very many pics on both days while standing in exactly the same place.  But I did find three instances where that happened.

As I studied these three photo combinations, something really jumped out at me.  Look at the depth in the sunny day scene (10-21-22) compared to the lack of depth in the cloudy day scene (10-20-22).  The pics on the left look so much shallower, almost flat, especially in the leaf closeup and the yellow tree.  That’s because the shadows are almost non-existent on a cloudy day. 

Conclusion?  Shading adds depth, 3D-ness, lots of it.  Without shadows, objects look flat.  They might be vivid with color, but until you add a range of values (shading), you aren’t going to get as much depth.  And that’s why color is really only frosting on the cake.  What’s the cake?  Shading, a range of values, from lightest light to darkest dark and every value in between.  My photos today and yesterday illustrate this point so beautifully.  Does that mean that I shouldn’t ever do a painting of something where it’s obviously a cloudy day?  No.  Each scene with its unique lighting has its own merits.  If I want to be true to the lighting that was there at the time, I need to be aware of its qualities and depict it realistically.

And that’s why, even if it’s a bright overcast day, I’m heading out to hike and take pics of the changing trees in the fall.  The sunshine is an added bonus, but it’s not absolutely necessary.  I love both kinds of days when the woods are ablaze with color.  They take my breath away and inspire me to paint them.  Light, shadow, and color - a beautiful three-element dance is performed in the fall here in northern Indiana.  I don’t want to miss it.

Dots and Wings, pastel, 11x14"

This is my latest pastel, of a Silver-spotted Skipper butterfly that happened to land on a white hibiscus in my garden just as I was photographing it.  My hibiscus blooms are huge in August and I love getting in close to take pics of them.  There are also woods behind our house and garden, so when I was outside photographing my flowers that day, the sunlight was filtering through the trees and creating beautiful colored dots of light in the shady background.  With the circles of sunlight and the butterfly’s delicate wings set against a bright white flower, the moment felt magical.

So why was this scene attractive enough for me to paint it?  Was it the dramatic contrasts between the white and dark shapes?  Yes, but there was something more than that.  Those dots of color reminded me of a really cool experience I had many decades ago when I was a teenager.

My parents used to drive my sisters and me all over North America every summer as we grew up.  We usually traveled with several other families, all of us pulling our separate trailers and meeting up in the early evening at a series of campgrounds.  We saw so many beautiful parks this way, stretching from California to Nova Scotia and all parts in between.  One night in Bar Harbor, Maine I had an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life.  A girl my age from another camping family had been to that campground before, and told us camping friends to meet her with our flashlights and beach towels after it turned dark.  We 6 teenage girls proceeded to walk over a hill on the edge of the campground that separated our trailers from the beach and ocean.  The hill effectively blocked all the light coming from the campground.  It was so dark.  With our flashlights on, we found the sand on the beach and sat down on our towels.  Then our friend instructed us to lay back on our towels, turn off our flashlights, and stare up at the sky.  It was a really clear night, BTW.  At first, we could see nothing.  Then after a few minutes someone in the group started to gasp.  Then we all started to gasp.  One by one stars started to reveal themselves to our dark-adjusting eyes.  It was incredible!  After a few more minutes the whole sky was lit up with stars like we couldn’t have even imagined.  We were witnessing the Milky Way stretched in an arc across the whole sky, clear as ever.  It looked so bright and it was so awesome that none of us could speak.  We just lay there, gazing up, awestruck, mesmerized by all those twinkling lights.  It was hard to pull ourselves away and walk back to the campground.  I felt changed by the experience.

Well, guess what I thought of when I looked at my reference photo for this painting?  Yep, that night on the beach.  So, I had a lot of fun interpreting the background lines, dashes, shapes and circles I saw in the photo.  I added clusters of dots that would imitate the night sky in Bar Harbor, Maine.  

Each of us is truly a condensation of a whole series of unique life experiences.  That’s why we artists all have a unique agenda when we go to render a work of art in our studio.  Our one-of-a-kind collection of life experiences guides us. And that night on the beach is why I loved adding colored dots to the dark background of this painting.  I was remembering the stars.