Towering Peaks

Towering Peaks (s10e1) - Version 1 [Lifetime painting #7]

Right up front let me say thanks for reading through my lengthy post and feel free to add any comments that you feel will help me out and please be honest in your assessment. That is the only way I will get better. I have no illusions as to where I stand as a painter at the present time. I know I am way way down looking up at the light. We’ll just take it one ladder rung at a time 🙂 Happy painting everyone. Make someone smile today 🙂

On this one, it was not even intended to be a completed painting. In between paintings, I have been trying to practice mountains on a couple 12X16 canvas boards that I have been using, scraping, and re-using for practice. My mountains have been so hideous that I end up scraping off the mountain and re-using the canvas after it dries and I re-apply liquid white. That was my intention here.

After painting the mountain (which is the best one I created out of the 10 or so I have made in practice) I thought I would continue a bit by adding in a few 'footy hills' and distant trees to practice depth. This is where I searched for a BR video where he makes the hills at the base of the mountain. I saw 'Towering Peaks' (S10e1) and decided I would try the hills, again with the intention of scraping off the canvas for later re-use once I butchered the hills. To my mild shock, I was still not disgusted with my painting so I decided to try the water and surrounding evergreen trees. I made the evergreen trees on both sides of the painting (unlike the BR version). I figured this was good practice for the evergreens. Again, I was not revolted by the trees. Too my eye, they have about 1.5 - 2 times the number of branches needed.

It was at this point that I thought that as long as I am this far in the process, I would go ahead and complete the painting and count it as an official painting. I have only scrapped/re-used canvases when I intentionally used them to practice specific elements of a painting. For example, besides more mountains, I am going to paint a whole canvas with nothing but barns made using a palette knife from top to bottom, just for the practice.

So lastly, I added the foliage at the bottom of the painting to complete it. The bushes are a major disappointment as they came out way too crowded and lack any depth whatsoever. I thought the grassy parts of the foliage came out OK. Layers are visible. My only complaint about the grass is the tufts should be a bit more random. Similar tufts seem to line up in a straight line a bit too much.

Now with all the self criticism (off the top of my head) being stated, I feel like I am starting to get a bit better. This painting actually feels like I accomplished something. I really need to concentrate on not crowding everything. Less is more a lot of times.

For my next project, I am going to paint this one again but on a 16X20 canvas.

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