Wednesday, February 6, 2008

There will be a treeeee...







On this canvas one day! It's slow going though, that's for sure. Although perhaps the palm fronds won't need as much detail as I'm anticipating putting into them.

I had to start off painting the sky and some clouds for the background.

Next, I painted all the parts of the tree white, so when I add the color- the blue in the background won't show through and make the colors look too dark. The white behind them will, hopefully, keep the colors bright.

I picked up some "hooker's green" (you laugh?)which is a really great color... except it's pretty transparent. That's frustrating because I've had to put multiple layers of it down on the green parts I've painted so that the fronds don't look like a complete mess! Then the green gets too dark. I'm going to have to go in and add some yellows and white and brighten it up now.

Aaarrrrgh!




In this picture with some green added, you can see that the bottom branches are a lot darker than the ones above them. The bottom branches and fronds have 3 coats of green, while the others have only one. I like the color of the paint with just the one layer of it, so I'm going to keep that in mind. I like finding just the right color, then perfecting that color, so I can keep it consistent throughout the piece.

....Not that plants need consistency, of course.


2 comments:

katiev said...

I don't know, i kind of like the darker parts of the palm fronds. It gives the impression of shadow, which would be expected from the perspective of standing under a palm tree and looking up into the bright sky.

Katie

Samantha G said...

Hai there Katie! Thanks for the comment. I'll definitely keep that in mind and I'm sure it'll help relieve me of some of the frustration of feeling that the green is too dark against the blue :)

-Sam