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Here is the first exercise I did in my painting class from camp. We were to paint a still life, interior, or landscape from life abstractly. Then we were to clean off our palette on a new sheet and let it dry as an underpainting for the next work. Next we were asked to paint again the previous painting from memory even more abstractly.

You can see the difference in the two. Shown after the first one below is the set up and underpainting for the second one. Of the people queried, 90% liked the looser, less accurate one better, saying it had more Soul. I saw what luminosity an underpainting brings to a work. I also understood that if I painted a third painting more abstractly than the second, and so on, you would very quickly get to the essential very basic shapes that interested me in the scene to begin with.

Oz is the name of the bathroom here for some reason, and these trees are just down the road from that. I have appreciated them every day each time I have been here, attracted by the strong vertical lines bisected by the lake and island behind.

On to painting something else tomorrow!

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