Skip to content

Exploring through the woods

The week before last I finished off a painting, that was a follow on painting to one I did a couple of years ago in pastel based on a flat grey day photo I took many years beforehand on a walk by Ladybower reservoir in Derbyshire. The pastel one has an immense attraction for me and I’m still not one hundred percent sure why after staring at it for many hours and trying to work out why. I think its because it features water and woodland, one of my favourite subjects, but more than that its because of the light coming through the far trees behind in pale pink with the lime green glade infront of it and the deep purple trees silhouetted infront. I love light through trees and this one captures a certain something that I find very appealing, so much so that I don’t want to sell it. Ok, well its obvious what to do then!

I decided I’d re-do it, since its a simple picture and do it on a block canvas in acrylics and accentuate the light that I love so much between the trees.Woodland rest

And had the original painting infront of me as I drew it out and started work on it, building up the colours and shapes and texture in the paint. Of course it was going to be different, although I could have done it exactly the same as the pastel, it is easy enough to copy it, but I thought I’d paint the colours as true pigments rather than mixing them with white to mute them, to make the chalky effect that pastel depicts.

The new painting was more about something else, as I added the sunlight angled through the trees rather than the flatter light Refreshing the spiritof the pastel which is called “Woodland rest”. The acrylic painting had to have a new name (rather than being the lazy option of falling back on “Woodland rest 2”!) so this one is called “Refreshing the spirit” since that is what it does for me. Trees and water and sunlight always refresh my spirit and make me feel good and alive! This new painting has a fresher feel to it, the colours are sharper with deeper darks of rich purple for the trees and dark parts of the water so the contrast is stronger.

But I want to know what you think.

Which do you prefer… and why?

7 thoughts on “Exploring through the woods”

Comments are closed.