I am planning for painting a large piece which should represent my, or rather our walk in life this year, 2022. It has been inspired from a photo I took while walking in the forest at Oak Ridges last August with my wife. The winding dirt road through the narrow forest reminds me of the path we have taken this year, with shines and shades but always happy for the beauty of existence.
Yesterday, I found some time to draw a sketch for a tonal study from this image. It is shown below.
I have divided the sketch to place the walker (my wife) at the point of interest assignable at the bottom left section as measured with a golden ration. But my image of inspiration is missing details to the right side of the walker, so I am planning on placing a tree there, in the highlight.
That tree should be a Honey Locust. I want one that is still mostly green as it is in the Summer time, not like the one shown in the Wiki page from a late Autumn. The drawing in my booklet in the image above is my practice with the shape of that tree, which in the end I transposed on a piece of scrap paper (Arches, cold press 140lb, 14 cm * 12 cm) and then applied masking fluid where I wanted to preserve the highlights.
As colors, I used primary colors from Daniel Smith
- yellow: Hansa Yellow Light
- red: Pyrrole Scarlet
- blue: Ultramarine Blue
The end result is in the image below
The paper was a bit bent, however I am very pleased with the green chroma I was able to obtain only by mixing the three colors.
With this occasion I have tested the application of masking fluid with one of the tools I was using or sculpting with clay which is made out of silicone. It seems that the making tape of pure rubber does not dry as fast on silicon as it used to with my cheap brushes before (I have ruined quite a few of those up to this moment).
