Diane works in a variety of media, including pastel, oil, and watercolor. Her passion is dramatic light and shadow and clean, saturated color. I am particularly interested in the effect of light on snow, trees, rocks and water.
Tonight she did a demonstration of Aspen trees in the fall. She picked this subject matter because of the many tree trunks she noticed while driving by a grove of Aspens with her husband. He then had to turn around and pull over so she could get a photo! Anyone else do this?
Diane said whenever picking a subject to paint, ask yourself why? What drew you to it and why? If you focus your brain on what inspired you, the why, your paintings will sing!
Before starting any painting, Diane usually does a thumbnail sketch or small rendering of the painting. This helps her define the colors, and the light and shadows within the subject matter.
Diane had already started her painting before the demonstration by painting the background sky and taping off the tree trunks with masking tap. She began by ‘splashing’ juicy colors of yellow, orange, and green on dry paper to develop the first layer of foliage of the trees. She let these colors mingle and mix and did not worry about painting individual leaves, as those could be added later.
To paint the distant trees that were in shadow she used a combination of blues and purple. By keeping a bead of wet color, she was able to pull the paint down without leaving any hard edges.
After drying her painting, she began adding scarlet and red to show more depth and shadows within the trees using soft and hard edges, letting the paint do the work. Because time was running short, she pulled off some of the tape of the tree trunks to demonstrate painting those.
Using a mixture of burnt sienna and Ultramarine, she mixed a nice brown/black color to define the trunks. She also added more reds and oranges over the top of the tree trunks to blend them into the foliage. To give the look of tree trunks in the blue background she lifted out some of the paint with a damp brush and then blotted with a tissue.
Below is Diane’s finished painting!
If you’d like more information or see more of her work or take a class, please visit her website.
