21 December 08

Tree for gate painting

Still working on the gate painting, which can be enormously uninteresting. One day I’ll paint a tree, the next day go over the grass again, the next day do some more work on a post. It was very nearly finished last week but, while pondering additional trees in the background, took a photo of the painting and was dropping trees onto it in Photoshop (I have a whole library of trees with the backgrounds cleaned off to transparency) when I oversized one by mistake and thought, that looks good, so spent the next two days painting it in.

Extraordinarily convenient tree. It resolved a small problem I’d had with the sky being just slightly too strong by being strong enough to push the sky way back into the background, while also defining the space of the paddock across the middle ground (always a difficult bit – foreground’s easy, background’s fairly easy but making the bit in the middle define the space between front and back can be really hard).

So, today it will be finished and I can get on with something else.

The booklet is finished and the proof has been approved. It’s 21 x 21 cm – 20 pages with a lot of information about me and where the paintings have come from – influences and so on. Lots of pictures.

An email suddenly arrived asking if the Landscape with Gumtrees and Electric Fence was still for sale. I’m so pleased that a painting I have always loved is off to a proper home.