Painting #3

So, painting #3 is finished. This is Marksburg Castle in the Rhine River Valley. With all of our vacations this has taken a little while to finish!

This painting incorporated some new elements for me... it was larger, for one, at 40cmx50cm (my previous were both 25cmx35cm). It included clouds and trees, new and different. But the biggest difference was that this was of a structure - where perspective and angles and light and shadow were all important. It was a lot more difficult! I think the eye is less forgiving on a structure than an element of nature. While I like how it turned out, I didn't enjoy painting it quite as much as the others. I think I need more nature in there!

I showed it to Rosella, my italian teacher, and she asked me where I learned to do all this. That made me think. I did learn somewhere, didn't I? How and when did that happen?

I guess I learned perspective back in drawing classes in maybe junior high school, we did quite a bit of drawing back then. But I didn't learn a lot about light and shadow from there... I realized that I have learned a lot about light and composition over the last 10 years from photography. Also the scrapbooking/card making I used to do has taught me a lot about color and composition/design. So I'm just pulling together different elements I've learned over time and using them in a different way. I guess it's surprising to others that I had all of this inside me just waiting to come out, but for me it is natural. It just seems to make sense, it feels right.

You never know what life is going to show you...

(PS - I created an album on Multiply where I will add photos of my paintings as they finish. If you want to see them together click here.)