Thursday, March 14, 2013

A Sycamore

"Sycamore"
24" X 24" Oil on Gallery Wrapped Canvas

I painted another scene with this same tree that is now hanging in my living room continuing to dry in a pretty snazzy frame. When I finished that painting I had cropped a couple of detail photos of it. One of the detail photos was very similar to the scene in this painting. I decided to crop again from my original reference photo, based on the previous cropped image, and used it for this painting. I also had two 24x24 cnavses I had painted yeyars before that I was never happy with and didn't bother to varnish so I sanded one down and painted over it reusing the canvas.....there is a lot of that going on considering this wonderful economy we're in. Funny, I mentioned to another painter down in Pasadena that right after Christmas I went through all of my old paintings and pulled ones I decided to paint over to reuse the good canvas and she had done the same thing in her studio! Apparently I'm not alone in making ends meet.

I'm really enjoying painting sycamore trees with their spotted bark and scraggly branches. Their bark reminds me of Winter camouflage the military used to use. I wish now that I had taken more reference photos of these trees this last Fall since I've been painting so many of them. I'll have to wait until next fall. In fact, next Fall I will go out to paint some sycamore scenes plein air. Should be fun. Even though this is one Gallery wrapped canvas I'll probably make a nice oak floater frame...or maybe just an oak frame to pop it in...should work nicely like that. I'll wail until it dries to touch and then paint the sides a dark color in case I go with the floater frame.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Great composition. I'm coming to love intimate well cropped images and this is a first rate example of the approach.

Ron Guthrie said...

Hi Mick,
Yeah, I love painting up close intimate scenes...so much less to worry about compositionally than an entire landscape. Good work you are doing over on your blog Mick.

Matt H. said...

I love sycamores - there are very few trees out there that provide such a delight to the eyes all season long. They grow to huge sizes in gnarled shapes, and their bark is an artist's dream.

Your portrait of this, big, old sycamore is beautiful. The leaning composition adds movement, and the mottled bark is magnificent. Nice job on the fine details (leaves, and branches), too.

Ron Guthrie said...

Matthew,
Thanks a lot for the generous comments on the painting. These sycamore trees are just like you say, an artists dream to paint. I like both eucalytpus and sycamore barks. Lots of fun for sure. They aren't as linear as the vertical looking bark of most trees like pines.