This is a pre-test for a painting I want to do of a scene in my memory from last week when I went fishing with my friend Babs.
Babs and I have been good friends for over 20 years now. That’s a weird thing for me to say because in my mind, I’m not much older than 20.
Last week, he and I went fishing at the Nimisilla reservoir and it was a gorgeous evening. A light rain kicked up about an hour before sunset, and we stuck it out because it wasn’t raining very hard. When the rain passed, the sun was starting to set, and I sat on the dam while he checked out a new spot further east, and I watched the clouds.
Of course, this painting doesn’t do justice to the memory, but I wanted to give it a shot while the picture was still fresh in my mind.
I won’t bother with a good bad and ugly, suffice it to say that I like the sky. There’s more color to this sky than there is in my memory, and the water lilly’s aren’t out that prominently yet, but I thought they would lend some perspective to the composition. I want to try this one again, but first I’m going to go through the process of a few more drafts and studies before I do. I want to get the trees to be more luminous, and paint them more like a single shape. I also want to have them fade into the distance more and desaturate to a grey as they do in order to provide more atmosphere to the composition. I toyed with the idea of putting a fishing rod in there, but that seems a bit cliche, even though it’s what we were doing.
The story I want to tell with this is one of satisfied silence and quiet peace. I’ve been having a tough time lately with my depression, and the night we went out was really nice because I was able to relax more than I have been able to recently.
I’ll give this one another go after some more drafts.