In the fall I had a chance to return to Eden for a short visit. I took the occasion to try another stab at that scene overlooking the lake, this time in oils and also this time in a vertical format. I also tried out the gray underpainting step which I found so helpful with the San Juan scene.
To get the view I wanted I had to set my easel and palette up at something like a 120º angle away from what I was painting. And I was on a pretty sharp slope so I had to twist back and forth and be very conscious of my balance the whole time. This was not how I typically would work and it make me perhaps less relaxed than usual. But the underpainting was actually pretty good as a start. It had a little bit of a Matisse feel to me.
I tried a quick trick of converting a photo I had to black and white and then using an effects filter to check my own “read” of the tonal map of the scene. This is a useful thing to do in forested settings like this, where the shapes seem to get too cabbagy. So what I did had that early fauvist cartoonishness to the drawing. I liked the lavender and lime green and those grays in the early take. It would have been nice to find a way to finish the scene with that palette. It reminds me of Matisse’s more austere palette in Tunisia.
So I worked on this a while and had that familiar moment where everything I did seemed flawed. This time I doused the whole thing in turpentine, first covering it with paper towels. It made the surface produce some really nice blurry transitions and some interesting grayscale effects. This was a tip in loosening up from Ellen L. Thanks! I somehow sensed there was enough right in this not to kill it with too much additional work. Also I only had limited time there, so I did what I could that afternoon and early the next morning and then went on my errand to Yazoo City. And then home.
As I shared this with a few friends, the feedback was - great, don’t kill it. Leave it loose. Well, I did what I could to stay true to that. I left a lot more in a rough state than I normally ever do. I found a few places to add in so as to complete something started without moving into a different kind of painting altogether. But it’s such an iffy business. I suppose if I did 3 paintings a day I wouldn’t stress over these details. I’d just let it be the way it is. So in that spirit, I’m putting down the brush.
