The Tender Land
Yesterday saw work on the final two portal flats for the upcoming UW-Whitewater production of “The Tender Land.” After this, of course, I will have to paint the groundrow. I thought I might be interesting to snap a photo of one of the flats at each step of the process.
First, here’s the palette of colors (I’ve just finishing stirring them at the start of the work session):
The other week, I based in shades of tan — lighter near the horizon line, and darker in the foreground — to help give a unified tonality to the whole piece, and to help create a sense of distance.
While it may or may not make sense from a painterly/fine art standpoint, it made sense for this project to base in the tree masses as the next step. The paint I’m using is pretty dilute scenic paint, so the approach is more watercolory than oil paintery; it’s really hard to lighten something back up once you’ve got paint down.
After the trees (mind you, you’ve got two flats going, so while one dries I work on the other. Back and forth, back and forth. . . ), I added the layers of ground. You can see the paint elevation on my handy little stand there. It’s covered in Saran Wrap to prevent splashed of paint from getting onto the original. This flat is the one on the far right of the elevation — it’s drawn in 1/2″ equals 1 foot scale.
Then I go back and start adding light and shade to my sylized tree and bush masses.
Now we’re heading into textures and detail. The plow lines and fence posts are also added.
Some more detail in the house and fence posts, some stylized stems and trunks, and some more lines of color to help create the plowed and planted fields. Those yellow dots on the bushes will become the centers of flowers.
Now is a good time to lay in the three sky colors, blending from darkest at the top to lightest at the bottom.
Barbed wire and the windmill. Also some flowers on the darker set of bushes.
This afternoon, clouds and done.