Work in Progress, Seven Sisters Inn, Update 7

Work in Progress, Seven Sisters Inn, Update 7

            Sorry for the delay in posting this update. My wife and I got away for a few days to our favorite spot in the world – the Blue Ridge Mountains. Spent some time hiking, birdwatching and sipping hot chocolate on a porch with a beautiful view. Lots of inspiration there.  Waterfalls, deep woods, rushing water over boulders. That’s paradise! For me, at least.

            So, here is update 7, which gets you caught up on the painting. In the last Update I roughed in the foliage of the foreground tree. Here I painted in the trunk of the tree as well as added more detail to the foliage. I purposely made it all dark to frame the House. In painting the tree trunk I put in multiple layers of raw umber, shaping the trunk and giving a feeling of bark as well as three dimensional qualities. The light color will remain in the light areas where the bark is highlighted but will be replaced in the shadowed areas by darker color.

   I then started laying in washes of a mix of French ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. It gives a dark brown/gray color for bark. I just kept adding glazes until I was satisfied with the depth of color and tone. In the process I gave shape to the trunk and suggested deep furrows of bark. 

            After darkening the trunk, I started working in the bark texture with the same dark mix. Going over and over, adding more cracks and furrows, continuing to darken it and add detail.

            Before finishing the bark I went back over the foliage and started darkening it and adding detail. I didn’t paint in individual leaves but added brush strokes to suggest leaves, I used a combination of hunter’s green, winsor blue and yellow ochre in a myriad of proportions. I wasn’t satisfied with the dark, so I added paynes gray – which also has a blue caste to it. The places where I defined leaves were on the margins where there was a big contrast change, such as on the outside against the sky or against lighter, sunlit foliage. The interior is just a mass of dark greens and only a suggestion of leaf shape. Leaf shapes are just for areas of greater contrast. I painted in areas of sunlit leaves also.

            Then I went back to the trunk and added more detail – again – only in areas of greater contrast, where it would make a difference. I added in more branches and darkened others.

            Finally, I worked a bit more detail into the lawn and started laying down some preliminary washes for the low wall, driveway, and sidewalk. That’s where I’ll be concentrating in the next week.