Studio #4: Personal Choice

Our final studio is more free as it is our personal choice. I had a hard time choosing my model because I have a lot of ideas and images that I would like to paint. This project is a little light and I would be applying the pointillism style we learned in the beginning of this course. My media was acrylic paint and the same canvas as usual. I used a flat brush for the dots.

Ideas hard to choose from:

Original image

I chose to settle with the above image because keeping in mind that I had a large canvas, painting a portrait of any of the floral would be not be convenient for a large painting even if they did look good. I also intended to display this landscape at home. Another reason I also chose it is because I love Asia especially cherry blossom trees and I could use the pointilism style here.

Progress

So far so good. Actually I had thoughts of keeping this as is as it looks like a scene in the winter. But anyway I started by sketching the trees. Do note that the trees are curving a little into a path way and the trees get smaller as they go farther away. Though the smaller trees looks so wrong. I used brown and black to paint the trees and instead of stroking them I dotted them for the pointillism - and it does give out a fuzzy wintry feel. I then started to lay down my blue paint, once again using a round brush - however I used a thicker one.

An idea struck me when I saw the afternoon sunlight spilling off behind the canvas. Do note that I didn't overlap the colors especially near the branches, leaving some white outlines intentionally. This is because once I've place it by the window at the right timing (when the sun is close to setting, the orange will go through the canvas to make that same effect.

Here (above) you are able to see that I've added color to the ground

 Note that I've made the side path a little darker and used green.

 I did several things here. I've made the sky darker by dotting it a darker shade of blue and adding them in some of the gaps on the cherry blossom tree. I've also added yellow on the initially green path way.

 Here I've added yellow at the side of the path way and spilled off cherry blossoms on the trail as it would give the effect of spring slowly turning into fall.

 Do note that on the above and below pictures the pointilism effect coming to play. As you go farther away, you can start to see them blending together. I would then move to patching up the white spots that remain and dab more pink for the cherry blossoms on the tree.

Final product.

On the last day of class when I showed this to Mr. Wonenberg, he commended me on how this piece turned out. He also commented that he liked how I added some colors (such as a dark shade of pink) on the sky and commented that I could also spread some it on the ground and around the leaves and the sky and so I did the adjustment for this final piece. The light spilling off behind the branches is made possible by the light radiating from the window.

Cheers! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays :)