Style

Blind Artist Vision: blog by Stella De Genova

Spring is sliding into summer and life takes on a more relaxed, laid back mood.  I know it does for me.  I’ve enjoyed planting my garden and watching the baby plants take to the soil and start to grow.  My pastel painting classes are on summer break, so I admit that I haven’t done a lot of painting, but I am collecting ideas and reference photos.

One thing I did want to accomplish was getting another painting done that had some airy branches with some spring blooms.  Looking through my collection of many painted trees over the years, most of my trees are bare or full of foliage.  I needed something that sang springtime.

My husband found a photo from his walking app that showed a tree beginning to bloom and I liked it.  The problem is that it was overwhelming me with a lot of branches and detail. 

What I tend to do more and more is zoom in on a smaller area of a photo and choose something I can magnify and turn into a larger painting.  I cropped the original photo to zoom in on the top right corner.  This was something I felt I could work with.

As you can see, there are branches and blooms against the background sky.  My plan was to start with a sky as an underpainting and build from there.  My first application of blues and pinks turned out too dark.  I then thought a marbled effect might be interesting, even if most of it gets covered by the tree branches.  So I experimented by adding some lighter colors and some darker random blue lines over all.  Next, I took a mist bottle of water and lightly sprayed the paper.  It softened the lines and the colors moved in and out of each other.  I liked how it looked.

I did forget to get a photo of the next step (that’s what happens when you start to get into it!) but that is where I added the heavier branch lines in a dark brown.  From there, I started adding more colors to the branches and adding softer colors where the blooms would be.

Finally, I added more bright colors for highlights and small branches moving in and out of the blooms.  Of course, I know that I used lots of beautiful color but now that I can’t see the color differences myself, I wasn’t sure if everything flowed nicely.  I reached out to my painting instructor, Julie, and she didn’t think I needed to change a thing.  Success!

Through the years I’ve always tried to paint in a certain style or in a more perfect way.  We are all usually our own worst critics, but I’m learning to work on paintings that don’t stress me and it’s so much more relaxing. 

As I give myself more freedom, my own style has evolved and I can call it my own.  Maybe I am in the summer phase of my painting journey.`

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