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Foose
I have been working on this piece
for far too long. Originally begun as a commission,
I got bogged down in detail and missed my deadline. I
keep going back to it to do a bit more and one day,
hopefully soon, it will be finished.
Because
I've been working on it for a number of years, I've
noticed something odd. As I grow older, my eyesight
gets less acute, and I need stronger reading glasses
to paint the details. One might think that my
painting technique would get looser but in fact the
opposite is happening. As I work from background
to foreground, I find that I can trace the evolution
of my skill as a painter in this one piece. The
background is loose, less accurately rendered...the
middle ground even more so, and as I get into the foreground,
I'm finding that I'm painting with near-photographic
realism.
There is still a bit more
to do on the left side of the foreground, then a lot of
detail on the foreground on the right. On the
left side, I plan to put in a hummingbird sipping at the
Jewelweed. I've
often seen them buzzing around large stands of Jewelweed,
also called Touch-Me-Not, for the seed pods that explode
on contact when ripe.
On the right side of the
foreground, I will have more spiderwebs sparkling with dew,
and a dew-spangled dragonfly perched on one of the cattails. I
want the viewer to feel the experience of parting the foreground
vegetation on a misty September morning and suddenly coming
upon a king of the forest.
Oh, and the title? Don't ask.
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