Dirt Path Barn

I'm starting over with the Dirt Road Barn.  And first of all, I'm re-naming it "Dirt Path Barn."  This first photo was taken from across the room and so it is a little distorted.  It really doesn't lean to the left.  LOL!  I put in some lines on the roof and a little texture on the road and the grass - and doors on the barn.  

After doing a little of this and a little of that with it for awhile, here is what it looks like:

I'm not sure where to go with it.  I'd like to put in a fence.  I tried a fence on the right side of the painting, and I ended up taking it out.  Maybe I'll put a fence along the left side leading up to the barn and then one in the background on the right.  

As with anything in life, you don't become competent at something until you work with it for awhile. As I work with the oil paints, the process is slowly becoming not quite so complicated and difficult.  Even with wearing latex gloves, I'm getting paint on my hands and arms.  There's a definite learning curve.  At the rate I'm going, I should invest in some Bounty paper towel stock because I'm going through lots of them!

I'm uncertain how to make this particular painting better.  It all comes down to the fact that I probably should've had a definite plan in mind before starting on it.  

Issues I see right now:

(1)  The dirt road looks wrong.  I think a solid dirt road without the grass strip down the middle would look better.  Just an old dirt path, really.

(2)  There needs to be "more" to the painting.  Perhaps I'll put some "impressions" of flowers in the foreground, and some cattle in the background.  Hay bales, maybe?  No - no cattle!  I have no idea how to do that. I'll stick to hay bales instead.

(3) I tried to get my colors from the three primary colors, plus white and black - and I'm having a hard time getting the colors I want.  Kay has talked about getting together a color-mixing class, and I definitely need to take that class!  One of the video lessons I watched was on mixing colors.  It's how to get the various shades of colors that has me stumped.  I want a deep rich grassy green - and the greens I've mixed just aren't getting where I want them, and I don't know what to do to get the colors I want.  I think I'll run by Hobby Lobby tomorrow and buy some greens and browns.  I'd rather have a tube of the colors I want rather than trying to mix up colors.  Once I have a color in the general range that I want, I can add other colors to it to get exact shades. 

(Later)  I went back upstairs to my studio and worked on the painting some more:

I took out the green strip in the middle of the dirt road, and I added some shading to the road.  I put a fence in the background on the right and added the shapes for two round hay bales.  I need to clean up the fence line.  I will probably go back up to the studio in a little while and take out the fence, re-paint the grass, and then re-do the fence.  I can see that if I shape the fence line with a curve, it will give the appearance of a hill in the background - which is good.   I also put in some wispy clouds. 

I'm thinking that maybe a line of trees beyond the fence might look good.  I'll play around with it later and see what works.  So far the road doesn't look very realistic.  I need to get online and look up "dirt roads" and see how artists make them realistic.

I need to let the paint dry a little bit before I fill in the details for the round hay bales.  The little "eraser" tool has come in handy to scrap off paint when I want to add a different color.   The front bale should be bigger, too.    Do you see the "hint" of yellow flowers in the right foreground?  

Overall, at least I'm not as discouraged with it as I was earlier.  It's getting better as I work on it.  The metal gates across the doors of the barn are a little sloppy.  I may re-do them, too.  

(Even later)

I went back to my studio and took out the fence - added some trees. Then I decided that instead of putting the fence back in, I would add a pond.  Right now the pond is a little green because I was unable to remove all the green from the grass.  So I guess I have to let it dry and then repaint it with the light blue.  Or maybe I can just "lay" the blue on it without brushing so it won't mix with the green.  That's one of the techniques that I've got to learn in order to work in oils.   I enlarged the hay bale in the foreground - although it could still be even a little larger.  I'd really like to add some cows grazing down near the pond.  I may look into that tomorrow.  For that distance, they wouldn't have to be very exact - so it shouldn't be too difficult.  Ha!  I've learned already that things that "look" simple to paint, seldom are!  

One thing I learned well today is that I need to clean the handles of my brushes in addition to cleaning the brush part.  I didn't put on gloves when I made the latest changes because it was late and I knew I'd only work on it for a few minutes before going to bed.  Still, just from touching the handles of a couple of brushes, my hands had paint all over them. I had to scrub with soap for a couple minutes to get all the paint off my hands.  So I will have to work more on keeping the entire length of my brushes clean.  Basically it means constantly wiping them down as I use them.  I may as well buy a large package of paper towels to keep in my studio.  I have a feeling I'll be going through them quickly until I get more into the hang of things.

Monday, July 4, 2016

After walking at Pinkerton Park this morning, I went by Hobby Lobby and bought some small tubes of different greens and browns.  I came back and worked a bit on the "Dirt Path Barn."  I added another tree by the barn, put a vine growing up on the front, re-did the water in the pond, and added more definition to the hay bales and the foreground flowers.  

(Later on 7/4/2016)

I'm done with this for now.  I put more detail on the road, the hay bales, added a tree to the front side of the pond, and put in a fence.  I worked on highlighting the front of the barn and the path to lighten it up a little bit.  I'm satisfied with it for now.  I think it still looks too plain.  I'm thinking of possibly taking out the dirt part in front of the barn and just have grass around the barn with the dirt path going around to the back.  I'm not sure.  I took it off the easel and set it up across the room so I could look at it.  I cleaned off my palette and put a new canvas on the easel.  So I'm ready now to work on something else until I get some inspiration to work on this painting again.  It's my first completed oil painting - although I'm not really finished with it yet.  

Things I will probably do in a day or two:

(1) Highlight the roof of the barn

(2) More definition to the hay bale on the right.

(3) The trees behind the pond look too uniform.  I need to either make one taller or add some shorter ones - or something to make it not look like a row of identical trees.

I emailed the above photo to my art teacher, Kay, and asked if she had any suggestions.  She said I could take some of the gray that is in the barn and "drag" it over the surface of the path so that it lays over the top of the rust color.  That's to give the path some variance so that it recedes behind the barn.  Right now it is too much the same color.  So I will probably go work on that for awhile tonight before I go to bed. 

And yes - I DID work on it more.  I took out the path from the barn to the dirt road, and I added some gray highlights and texture to the road.  I didn't match the green colors very well where I put grass back into the painting.  So I will work on that more tomorrow.  Oh, and I added a couple of birds earlier today - I had almost forgotten about them.  I got online this evening and Googled "paintings with dirt roads" and looked at how other artists painted dirt roads.  I need to make the grass look like grass - or weeds anyway.  Then the road needs to have little rocks and gravel in it - maybe a mud puddle even.  And highlights need to be added to the dirt area outside each of the gates of the barn.  It is interesting seeing how the gray I added to the road makes it look like a hill.  I'll work on it more tomorrow.  It's already back on the easel.  It had about a two hour "done" phase before I started working on it again.  Ha ha!

(July 5, 2016) And the solution to when you work and work and work on trying to make a road look realistic, and it doesn't.  Just take it out!  

Now that the road/path is gone, I feel I need to put something in the foreground.  Not sure what.  Perhaps I will leave it as is.  I'll think about it.  :-)  I also need to rename it since there is no longer a dirt road or path.  I'm a little weary of this painting.  From now on, I will have a plan BEFORE I start painting.  Then I won't have all this "should I do this, or should I do that" the whole time.