shopping mall / flea market sale landscape

final version maybe
acrylic with neocolors

Yesterday I went fishing with Susan and Peggy. I did put on my waders and boots and I did walk around but ended up not fishing. They fished and I started a painting. I was inspired by Carl's class to look at colors, figure out which yellow and which blue would make the color and then paint the colors and not think about the object. Which I did. I should have taken a photo.

(Version 1) I had lots of greens in the general shape of the trees and the river bank and I rough sketched in with soft pastels the sky and river. I bring the greens home and then finished the shapes in the evening and then started fussing with it (Version 2). I added the tree trunks, worked on the river, and added some grassy brush strokes (Version 3).

What I like about it is that I used greens and I got the general shape and look of the Rush River at that corner. What I should work on is making it look less like a flea market sale landscape. It's very blah and I think because there isn't a focal point anywhere. When it dries I will do more to it but not in a fix it way but to take it in some other direction. Add teal and fuchsia swirls? Collage the water? Not sure. There is a white line on the inner edge of the river near the close bank that bugs me too and I'll get rid of that.

A few of paintings of what I'm inspired by are Wanda Gag's Tree Forms which on exhibit last year, Robert Arneson's Three Generals, currently on exhibit at MIA in gallery 315/316. This image is dim and dull in comparison to the real thing. Three Generals makes me want to spray this or cover it in matte gel medium and scribble all over it. This Richard Willenbrink self portrait doesn't make me want to put myself in here but I love his sky and his grass and hills and variations of greens. The focal point is of course him, and I need to figure out a focal point. Maybe it's a shadow or going into the woods in the dark corner or maybe going around the corner. Maybe I don't have movement and the eye has nowhere to go? I love the George Morrison's at the MIA; the early and late works, no matter. Mount Maud has movement and a focal point and lots of greens.

Maybe I need to work on picking my settings differently. Maybe I need to add a red canoe in the dark corner (that's sort of Minnesota-derivative), maybe I need to go deeper in and not do a whole area. Maybe maybe maybe. Now that I look at these I like the earlier version of the water and that gives me ideas of what to do next.

The next evening I painted on a scrap and then matt gelled one half and sprayed the other half. On that I experimented with how other media stuck or didn't stick on top of the acrylic. I tried conte crayons, soft pastels, oil pastels, and caran d'arche water soluble neocolor crayons. Neocolors won in my tests for what appealed to me. Plus I had a bunch of colors. I added in purple and blue to the tree area to maybe create more depth and worked on the other areas.

I like the final version MUCH better. Does it work? I don't know. Maybe it looks like a painting that a little kid took and used crayons on (Duh, basically that's what it is and I'm the little kid). The overlay of scribble gives it more energy and it no longer looks quite like a flea market sale painting.

version 3

version 2

version 1