Asparagus patch work in progress, part 2

And now to finish the painting...

Work continues on the details bit by bit.  This included darkening the trees with black and burnt sienna (a rusty colored brown) and redrawing some of the branches in the nearly finished trees.  I'm also pulling the sky down into the trees as I go.  Artists like to call the spaces in trees where the sky is visible "sky holes".

More blacks and purples in the shadows and more orange in the highlights.  I've also added more of a blue-green-grey to the middle tone areas.  Asparagus has a bit of this color in it, plus I wanted to de-emphsized the areas that weren't being directly hit by sunlight by making them more neutral in color.  Though it isn't obvious in the photo, a bit of salmon pink and lavender are going into the sky.  The trees on the left are more blended, again to de-emphasize them.  I really want to push the patches of sunlight.

At this point I got caught up in the "zone" and forgot to take more photos until it was pretty much done.  In the final piece, the trees got darkened quite a bit with black, burnt sienna, purple and dark green.  A lot of burnt sienna goes into the silo as well, and I toned down its highlights by using blue rather than yellow.  The yellow in the sky made it too washed out; bright orange and bluish purple made it both more intense and darker, and more in keeping with early morning.  Though I increased the contrasts in the background asparagus slightly with a few more blacks and yellows, it seems darker because the foreground is much brighter.  Various yellows, including just a bit of the palest yellow, add depth and texture.  It isn't obvious, but there are bits of the bright orange from the sky scattered throughout the asparagus as well.

Hopefully next week I'll have a newly finished piece to show you.  I also have receptions for two different shows next weekend, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

Asparagus Patch, work in progress part 1

I haven't posted lately partly because I've been pretty busy and partly because I honestly don't have any thing worthwhile to post.  I've made a few attempts in pastel recently, including a large sunflower, a plein air landscape and a still life with tomatoes.  None of them turned out, so I decided to switch to a larger sized oil landscape.  It's giving me fits as well.  I haven't abandoned it yet, but I did decide to set it aside for awhile until I feel like I can work on it without getting frustrated.

Meantime, I thought everyone might be interested in a series of photos I took of the asparagus patch posted a few weeks ago.

I started by quickly sketching the scene in black pastel to give me the basic idea of where everything show go and to lay out the foundations for the darkest areas.  I sprayed this with fixative so it wouldn't smear all over or blend with and dull the light areas.

Then I added color to the sky, followed by the trees, working from left to right to minimize smudging.  Highlights in the asparagus were next.

Purples and blues in the shadows followed, along with highlights on the little storage silo.  Then I started on the details of the asparagus and trees on the left, adding depth with more yellows and oranges to emphasize highlights and trying to work out the texture.  A bit of pale yellow was added to brighten up the sky as well.

Blogger seems to be objecting to my adding a whole series of images in one posting, so I'll finish it up tomorrow.

Asparagus patch, early morning

Asparagus Patch, Early Morning 12x16 pastel, copyright 2011

I am not a morning person.  The transition to getting up before the sun and getting the kids around for school is never an easy one for me.  To try and keep myself awake, the dog has been getting a brisk two mile walk after the bus leaves.  The first day of the walk I realized that the rarely seen morning sun makes rather dramatic shadows and highlights, so the next day I took my camera along.  The dog was a bit annoyed with all the stops but I was seeing some very familiar scenes in a different light - literally.

One of our neighbors has about 1/2 an acre or so of asparagus.  I watched for a few minutes as the light of the sun crept though and over the trees to catch the dew on the plants.  Every morning now I find myself staring as I walk by to see how it changes from day to day.

The asparagus, by the way, is wonderful on the grill.