Memories of Summertime

Tried a new method of underpainting the canvas with 3 tones of acrylic paint (black for dark/yellow ochre for mid/white for lightest areas) before using water soluble oils - this worked really well & the paint didn't get absorbed into the canvas like it usually does, meaning the brush strokes kept their form more, plus it helped keep the notan structure intact. This is from a photo I took in Provence last summer.

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Comment by Jessica Futerman on March 13, 2014 at 1:58: Jon - if you are interested, take a look at this link which shows how some of the Old Masters painted roads:

http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/browse/road?projectId=art-p...

Oh, and by the way, I looked up where this photo was taken & the perched village I left out is Gordes! Maybe I should try a bigger version & include it! And think about the road a bit more!

Comment by Jessica Futerman on February 28, 2014 at 20:43: Jon - good idea to look out for master artists' handling of roads - I'll keep an eye out for them while doing VAA assignments from now on too!

Comment by Jon Main on February 28, 2014 at 9:27: I don't even know if it's a composition problem in the pure sense - I notice it in my own paintings - roads coming out the picture plane get huge due to the perspective - maybe it's not a problem if one treats it right. Guess the best thing would be for us to look at some master artists handling of it (there's a VAA idea for you!) and see how they do it - do they make it smaller or soften it off. What's good is you 'road' is a trach and pretty 'soft' - nice.

Comment by Jessica Futerman on February 27, 2014 at 20:23: Thank you all so much, Sharon, Laura, Cristina, Jon, Silvana, Linda, Richard & Michael!!! What a lovely greeting in the morning to see all your kind & encouraging comments!

Jon - thanks for mentioning your opinion about the size of the road! If I paint this scene again, larger, I'll keep it in mind - actually, you could see a hilltop village in the distance, but I simplified it here & showed more of the houses, because the canvas wasn't large enough for such a complicated composition! Possibly the scale of the houses is off because of my changes and this is what's bothering your eye??

Comment by Michael J. Severin on February 27, 2014 at 13:45: Great painting Jessica!!

Comment by Richard Michael Taylor on February 27, 2014 at 13:25: Very well done!

Comment by Linda McNeill on February 27, 2014 at 9:32: Nice composition, Jessica.

Comment by Silvana M Albano on February 27, 2014 at 9:32: Very. very nice!!!!!!

Comment by Jon Main on February 27, 2014 at 8:57: I like the color, the light, the fact that there seems to be 'air' in there. I feel the composition could have been tweaked a bit - the road is very big... :)