Going green

Artists on the whole don’t like painting summer trees – too much….. well….. green! Winter trees have better shapes with all those bare branches, spring trees have the trunks and branches with just a hint of greenery around them, and autumn, well, all artists love painting autumnal trees – the golds, and reds, and oranges are so appealing and full of gorgeous colour.

 

So this week when I went for a walk with my friends I knew that it would be full of green, that all the greens would be a similar colour, not the later summer greens that are more olive and sage greens, no this green would be bright sap green. But, I’d find something to photograph and armed with camera, and knowing exactly where we were headed since I chose the walk this time, we hiked off to the green stuff.

 

Having the artist’s eye, I knew that I would find little gems of details amongst it somewhere, searching for the contrasts of shape or other colours. And as these photos show, the strongest colour in each image is green but with a bit of thought towards composition and the shapes of the tracks, the white of the cow parsley, or line of trees, or how the light is creating shapes within the shadows, the pictures are interesting to look at. I love each of these for different reasons and know that each of them would make a good painting as the eye is lead into each image – although I would probably incorporate a little more colour into each one just to make it more appealing to the eye.

But then a painting shouldn’t be a direct copy of a photograph, it should have artistic licence. Even when you’re going green!