I intensified some of the elements of this painting and reworked some of the foothills area back by the mountains and liked it better. I brought it to the Vanguard Artists meeting Friday and received some valuable critiques from the members, as well as visiting artist Julie Gilbert Pollard. Since I am considering this a study for a future larger painting of this scene, I find critiques such as these invaluable.
3 comments:
Beautifully done! Isn't is valuable to get critiques from other eyes? Only a suggestion, but softening the orangee splotches on the foreground path would let the valley and mountains have more importance. I wouldn't lighten the path, just eliminate the hard edges between the light brown and orangee brown shapes on the path. My eye keeps going to them because they are zigzag warm shapes within a cool painting.
Thanks, Sandy! The path is actually an arroyo, which is a dry wash which becomes very wet and deep with flash floods in the desert. I have been warned, already, that the horizontal foreground aspects of this stop the eye from moving back to the rest of the painting, so when I do the larger one I will temper the depth of that as well as the edges to make it less important. I was only thinking of making the agave plants' blossoms prominent against the darkness of the arroyo there in the foreground. This reminds me that there are many, many more aspects of a scene to consider when planning a painting! I do agree with you and will do some reworking for my large painting of this scene.
Thanks for commenting!
Gorgeous palette. I love the inclusion of the yucca plants...lovely!
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