Every Picture Tells a Story

In the studio today - had missed a few days.  Last Friday I tried to go out sketching - faint hope! Beaten back by some ferocious rain showers.  So it was back in the studio today, working on the thumbnails again.  I decided to focus on a picture of a tree, a boat and the shore.

Now the last time I was in, I had worked up a picture mostly in black and white.  I started with this.

 I realise now looking at the photos again that when I started out on this theme I had given quite a bit of thought to composition, and abstract values.  I forgot about this when I was in the studio - I can see it now!

Anyway, after making that start, I progressed through these steps.

So this is how it looked this morning.  What I thought I'd do was to start a coloured version and do a dark sky and sea.  So I pulled out a piece of paper which already had some colour on it, and I made a fresh start, forgetting all about my abstract values (of course).

I paused after this start cos' I found the sketchyness with the bold colours really interesting.  Maybe I shouldn't do exactly what I had planned.  So I tried carefully adding some blue (mixture of ultramarine and quindacrone blue.  I was thinking about layering up carefully.

This is still pretty sketchy and I did like that quality about it, but on I wanted to continue with darkening the sky and the sea.

Finally I added some green and sorted the sky out.

Now, as usual, there are some things I like about this, and some things that could be better.  I like the little cloud, and I like the colour of the far away hill.  Does the green island/promontory work?  I'm not sure - maybe it's confusing.  I like to boat colour and the shadow, but I wonder if the boat is too big in relation to the tree.  And above all, what has happened to my abstract values?  Doh!

But I'm going to be positive.  I think this is a good start to some 'picture-making', which I've decided is to be my theme for the autumn.  I want to get away from just re-painting sketches.  I want to make pictures, and pictures have to tell a bit of a story.  I think there IS a little story in this picture, so that's why I think I'm going along the right lines......just not there yet.....