Fence Post Series

The setup at Scotsdale farm was at 10 am today.  Both Christie and Bob joined me.  It was cool and quite windy.  Luckily I had my French Easel.  I have been exploring the field and fence post patterns here for some time.  It is an interesting series spanning seasons and time of day.  This is the first day that the unkept fields are truly green as opposed to the bleached grasses from last year.  The greens are the fresh yellow greens of early spring.  These will fade quickly into early summer greens.  These myriad of greens are what many artists detest.  Some stop painting from life until fall arrives.

Just Beginning Green, 6x8, Oil on Board

The challenge is to capture the delicate but vibrant greens.  This is what the scene looked like early in mid morning with the sun fairly low in the sky.  The fence post pattern itself was the second challenge and the final challenge was simplification.

A series offers the artist a very fertile development experience.  One learns a great deal from the approach and I recommend it highly.  The series can consist of pretty much anything.  In my case I am exploring fence post patterns at times of day, in weather conditions, and in seasons.  I am using a variety of locations and compositions.  Today the plan was to have two paintings done at near the same time with the same composition.  The first was a quick 6x8 on board and the second was to be 11x14 on canvas.  By the time I started the canvas I realized that the light had changed dramatically.  So I will proceed in the studio painting from my pencil sketches and the 6x8 shown above.

For this outing I used a new (inexpensive) hogs bristle #12 filbert.  It performed OK.  For my paint based sketch to establish points, lines, masses, I used a ragged #4 round.  For paint I used what was on my canvas and added yellow ochre for speed ( don't have to mix it).  I has Azo lemon Yellow, Cadmium Orange fonce, Alizarin, Viridian, Cobalt Blue, and Titanium White.