Evil trees

Sometimes I am truly surprised by which paintings prove the most frustrating. That just shows how much I have to learn as an instructor. There was quite a struggle in the classroom tonight. We dealt with shadows that we thought were too fat,  too thin, too opaque, too transparent, colors that we thought were too blue, too pink, too gray, too bright.... You name it, we struggled with it. I've been thinking about why. It's isn't that we can't mix color, every student in the class mixes successful color every week. It isn't that we can't make trees or shadows, we manipulate our brushes to do our bidding every week. I truly believe that it was the stark simplicity of the photo that made everyone get a bit of stage fright. We're used to images with a lot of activity to deal with. We also haven't worked on anything this graphic before. So, I think everyone let their brain get scared and shut down a bit. I think it would have helped if I had brought in a finished painting so you could see where we were heading with this image. I didn't make a ton of progress on my painting during class because I was away from the easel a lot. So, I will try to work on the painting this week so we can discuss it next week. Lessons learned: don't switch gears so abruptly (we spent a lot of time working off master paintings, and then I switched back to a photo, but one that was completely unlike any of the images we had been working on), and when doing a painting that is a style unlike anything we've dealt with before, it would be beneficial to bring in a finished painting so you can see where we're heading.

All that said, I still think everyone did a great job. We figured out the color issues, everyone did a great job convincng me that there was light coming over that hill and through the trees. There is still a lot to learn from this photo, so don't give up. You might even want to start it again and see if working through it differently gives you better/different results. Welcome back to Emily1, and welcome to Emily2. You did a great job keeping up with our craziness, and I was really impressed with your color mixing. You handled that much better than most beginners! Next week brings us to seascape. I'll go easy on you all. Promise.