Before and After: The Subject and its Painting

The mystery of painting has taken hold of me.  It's the thing I loved from the moment I discovered painting, how when I just let go and let paint all was well.  I do it, work hard at it, I let it go.   The new little paintings were finally dry enough to scan, though not dry enough to mail so I'm not posting them to my sales blog for a few days at least.  I took two painting day trips in the past 10 days and two days prior to reconnoiter painting spots. One to Buntzen Lake and one to Boundary Bay's bird sanctuary.

They were two great days and I made five tiny 4 x 6" paintings in those two days.  I'm going to post them *all* here in the spirit of full disclosure.  I don't claim them as good, they are just what they are and I will think about them for a while before before deciding what's what with them.

I don't choose the most promising and visually impactful views to paint, just things that get my blood going that I want to work from.  Often the paintings don't turn out at all like what I'm sitting in front of and even when they catch the spirit of it there's a lot left out or added or both.  This is not a view, it's a painting.

So here goes, I'm going to post a very quickly taken photo of the inspiration to paint and a photo of the painting that resulted from it.

This first photo is of what I was sitting in front of when I painted the piece below it, partly from the view, partly from the feel and memory I have of the Boundary Bay Sanctuary.

The dark forest floor often stops me in my tracks and I just did what I could with this little mess.

The painting below the photo is far different from it's provoking scene

 

 This little tree is hardly close to the painting below it.

Here is the stump and tree hidden in the dark that ended up in the painting below the photo.  The colours were much warmer than the photo shows though.

I have, perhaps in my ignorance, always thought of plein air painting as having to be done with faithfulness to the subject, to the light, the time of day and on and on.  All I know now is that these paintings would not be the same and the experience of making them would not be the same without sitting outside looking at what I'm inspired to paint.

Some of these will be posted to my sales page soon.