Speaking of Art Blog

Autumn Rain, pastel, 12x12"

This is my latest pastel, of a ton of raindrops covering a fallen leaf at Mississippi Palisades State Park.  My husband and I went hiking there one autumn day shortly after it had stopped raining.  While I have rendered a few raindrops/dewdrops before, I had never attempted quite so many on one object.

Here is my original reference photo.  Quite a dramatic difference between this and my resulting painting, wouldn’t you say?  What made me decide to use this reference photo and crop and tweak it to then render this painting?  I guess I could visualize the potential in that drab little scene.  You see, with all the rain that day, I had been contemplating taking closeup pics of raindrops as soon as we started hiking because I wanted to explore painting them when I got back home.  So, I started looking for them.  Much of the water was not cute little raindrops.  Instead, there were puddles, raindrops all glommed together.  No, I wanted raindrops.  There are plenty of wooden steps and boardwalks at that park, so I started looking around for raindrops whenever we walked on wood.  BTW, I love rendering wood, wet or dry, new or old, wood is so interesting to me.  I love jazzing up the veins and knots and muted colors in wood, exaggerating it a bit and bringing out its character.

Well, when I spied this tiny little leaf with all its raindrops, laying on a step of wet wood, I saw a treasure with great potential.  Of course it really helped that I took a high res image that could catch every minute detail of each of those raindrops.  At home, I cropped the image, punched the subtle coloring, and pushed the contrast.  Ah yes, there they were, tons of raindrops just waiting for me to examine them closely in order to know how to paint them.  I learned a lot just by studying the photo I took.  Then it was just a matter of applying what I learned and transferring it to pastel paper.

So, do I always plan to look for some particular thing even before I set out with my hiking boots and camera?  No, usually not.  But each time I go out into nature without a plan, nature usually tells ME what I need to observe.  The weather and the amount of sunlight and the kinds of trees and plants and wildlife all combine to tell ME what to notice.  Then suddenly my creative juices are flowing and I’m making a mental list of new ideas for future paintings.  Sometimes those ideas lead to dead ends, but other times a sweet surprise will inspire me and I am off and running with it back in my studio.

My photos are just a springboard, a means to an end.  They help me get started and they inform me of details, that’s it.  Coloring and how much to crop and how much to exaggerate so that I guide the viewer to my chosen focal point, that is all up to me.  I wanted this painting to be all about raindrops atop a fall leaf and wet wood.  I am confident that I have succeeded.  These raindrops make me happy.