Plein Air.Day 3.Part 2

Square Format

This piece was done on the back of one of the pieces from Day 1 as I was not happy with my work from that day and was still suffering sticker shock on the price of watercolor paper. (Clearly, I need to place an order with Cheap Joe's.) I tore the paper into a square because I wanted to focus on the lower part of the tree trunk. Like yesterday's post, I started with watercolor paint and then added gauche to deepen the colors, so I could experiment with the gauche, but also because Day 3 was a very different day.

A New Day

When I arrived and took my first look at the tree, a European Beech, it was a whole new scene from the day before. The day was darker and wetter. In fact, a number of New Hampshire towns had suffered tornado hits just a few hourse earlier. The moisture and darkness made the moss on the trunk show up as a green glow. As the day darkened, the trunk appeared nearly black in some areas.

As the afternoon progressed we got more and more rain. Eventually, the lefthand doors of the carriage house had to be closed to protect the building interior and I moved my table back from the open doors to keep the paintings dry. By the end of the day, the tree trunk was mostly wet and instead of the light gray of Days 1 and 2, it was a very dark brownish charcoal. Despite the water that was streaming down the trunk, there were a few spots that remained dry due to the bumpiness of the trunk's surface.

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Cutting

This last photo shows the tree from a different angle. I was attracted to the mass of this trunk but disturbed by the drastic cutting it had suffered. The term "pruning" does not convey what has been done to this tree. I could only hope the cutting was done to save the life of the tree. This abrupt cut of the trunk shows up in each of my paintings as a sharp edge on the righthand side of the trunk. The sharp edge is all that showed from my vantage point inside the carriage house -- not the flat cut surface. Check out this photo by Jean-Pol Grandmont of a magnificent European Beech.

Shooting

The painting was shot with natural light.