A Tale of Two Kayaks

 It's November and another free class taught by artist Chris Fornataro becomes available. I almost didn't sign up again because there is so much to get done in putting the garden to sleep for the winter and Thanksgiving just around the corner, but at the last minute I decided I really need the practice with landscapes.

Again, I wasn't exactly thrilled with the reference photo, but I knew from the last class in March that it is still possible to end up with a decent painting even with a less than inspirational photo.

The first lesson was breaking the landscape into large value shapes and not getting stuck in the details which is great practice for me. I already like where this painting is going better than the photo.

Here it is with all the steps completed, but the water reflections and getting that illusion of sand underwater in the foreground didn't look right to me.

I decided to forget the sand under the water and make the side canal more still and reflective, but I'm still not certain this choice was an improvement. ??? 

One of Chris's tips was to remove detail and add more blue grey color to the background trees to get a deeper sense of depth on the painting. You can see the difference between the two paintings above, I found that suggestion was very helpful and I loved how that little change made such a difference. 

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Next I decided to challenge myself to see if I had really learned the skills from class by painting from a photo I took of Jeff kayaking Sept of 2019,

First step, start with a value sketch. Second, adjust the design to feature your main focus. I wanted to showcase the sunlight through the trees and also extend the land more than the photo so that I could practice adding visual depth.

Blocking in the shapes, I added an extra step by adding an under-painting of yellow and orange just because I wanted to try it out.

Adding the darker colors of the water and trees went well, I wasn't too keen on the sky and had to go back and fix that!

The sky is much improved, but the water reflections don't look correct to me yet, too bright, the lake water isn't that choppy, also not enough shadow on the vest or kayak.

Greying down the water reflections and adding shadows to the  vest and kayak helped a lot, but I still don't think the water looks right. Obviously I need more practice understanding how to paint light on water.

Overall, I'm thrilled with most of it, I improved on the photo, I got the depth and "atmospheric perspective" looking pretty good and I resisted the urge to do anymore detail on the trees which is a big win for me, "Miss Fiddle-brush."

I'm glad I did the class, even though it was very similar to what we did in March, I know the repetition really helped some concepts sink in for me! Practice makes progress...

Happy Creating!

>^-^<

Tina

Here's a sample of Chris's teaching style on YouTube: Click to watch 10 Tips to Improve Your Landscape Paintings