Field study(detail)

(C) 2016 Dale DiMauro

Earlier this week I started this painting of myself walking through a local field with a woodland edge seen in the distance. Above, is a detail of the aforementioned picture. Prior to my wife arriving at home late in the day I had come upon two revelations as a result of working on this picture.

First, I have begun to paint sky's in a very different manner. I continue to paint my sky's with a wet brush on a wet paper and build up color or value from the horizon up. Lately, I wet small segments of the paper instead of the whole area of the sky which I had been doing. This gives me more time as the paper can dry quickly while enabling me to get more variation in the edge of clouds or color etc. The absence of color in the sky in certain areas can suggest clouds or create more depth with less washes. The result in a more naturalistic sky with greater variety and more concentrated color.

The other revelation which came upon me last Friday has to do with the painting of trees. I prefer my evergreen trees to have an element of green in them. However, I do not want them to be turf green or artificial looking. As a result, for sometime I have mixed phthalo green with alizarin crimson and payne's gray to arrive at a coolish green. This color mix gets pulled into the background as a result of being a cool color. However, I used this same color mix not just for a few tall separate evergreens but to link the ground plane and drew with the brush in neighboring areas which created greater depth and unity. This further defined the warm yellow in the field in front of the woods.

I was thrilled and did not want to put the brush down. However, it was time to think about our plans for dinner.