Assignment Four

 

Assignment Four

For this assignment I thought long about what to paint and wanted to create something slightly different than my previous work from the exercises. I found a beautiful winter landscape of Semer water in the Yorkshire dales, with lovely mood and atmosphere. I decided to work on canvas 80×60 using acrylic paint.

I painted the picture after which I decided I was not completely happy with it because the picture was not taken by me but was from a calendar and I could not put a personal touch into the work. So I decided to look in my photo album to find something with similar cold atmosphere showing water and trees. I found one picture that I always identify with as it is a very lovely place; I used this photo earlier for watercolour exercise.

 

This is also within walking distance of where I live so when I go for a walk I can observe certain details. I made preparation work on board using tempera on a 90×70 format,

after which I wasn’t too happy with it as it did not portray the atmosphere I wanted it to, I used too much black in my opinion which I don’t like doing but I needed to so I decided to work on the only available canvas 90×90 and try to paint something that I won’t focus too much on detail in and won’t be too realistic but will appear how I feel when I’m painting. When I chose the photograph to work from I knew that there was a lot of trees and detail in the photo and I knew it would be a challenge. The only way to show this realistically is to draw the photograph out and then use paint but that then becomes a copy of the photograph and not a work in its own right. When I started working on the painting from laying down the first colours it changed, the green grass in the foreground, grey water and blue sky. I got inspired by the colour combination and I knew that I needed to carry on in that direction not changing the tonal valuation of the colours. I knew that the whole atmosphere would be different if I leave the colours like they are compared to the p[photograph. The problem that appeared was how to paint the trees so that they are there but so that they don’t stand out from the whole painting, so not too much detail and creating a unity in the whole painting, in some of my other paintings you can see more colour but I wanted to limit this as I was scared that if I use too much then the three main colours with loose its pastel character. I created a different atmosphere than I planned to but at least showed who I am and how much I like painting, so I can definitely not just copy a picture but have to put a bit of myself into the picture, so I used the photograph only for guidance.

Final piece acrylic on canvas 90×90 cm