Lazy Day at Lazy H (x-post pastels)

[Bartc]

No wildflowers, but a lovely canyon, friendly beautiful horses, dogs and chickens. Fun day with good weather at Lazy H Ranch in Half Moon Bay, CA. Good painting group. I did one pastel on Sienna Pastelmat, 16x12". B. Charlow 2023

 

[ams]

Nicely done. I like your use of color and how you captured the old barn.

 

[Terri]

Your outings with your painting group always sound like a blast. I agree with Anne: your palette is excellent here.

But hmm. The proportions seem off on the side, the window especially. If that barn was sagging from age that would explain it - hard to tell from my phone, too!

 

[Bartc]

Your outings with your painting group always sound like a blast. I agree with Anne: your palette is excellent here.

But hmm. The proportions seem off on the side, the window especially. If that barn was sagging from age that would explain it - hard to tell from my phone, too!

It was sagging from age, being 100 years old or so. But I also have a distortion that come in from using Photoshop to skew/distort the snapshot to get it square. The paper curls and the perspective changes, so I have to use those PS mechanisms to try to straighten it out.

 

[Bartc]

Terri, our outings are a blast indeed! If you're even in the SF Bay Area, let us know and you can hang with us.

 

[Bartc]

Terri, the barn may be a bit distorted due to a problem I've been having with perspective. Since my easel is off to my left (or sometimes right), the tilt can put me off verticals a bit on structures. I'll have to work on that. But here's a photo of that barn from a similar (not quite the same) angle:

 

[CaliAnn]

Good one Bart!

 

[Terri]

Terri, the barn may be a bit distorted due to a problem I've been having with perspective. Since my easel is off to my left (or sometimes right), the tilt can put me off verticals a bit on structures. I'll have to work on that. But here's a photo of that barn from a similar (not quite the same) angle: View attachment 30061

Great shot of this old barn, Bart! Your palette really did this old structure justice. You're right, the angle here is different from your painting, but there are definitely some sagging doors and loose wood in the old beauty! It does show a different vertical mainly for that upper window, and the roof line takes an odd swoop, front and back, which you captured quite well.

This was a tough one, in my opinion. I see how easily things can get distorted if not facing this head on. For a day visit, and going plein air, you did well.

 

[Artyczar]

Excellent work Bart!

 

[Bartc]

Thanks, folks.

 

[Enyaw]

coloring works. It's your veritcales that are giving the piece some grief. Looking at your photograph; though the barn leans, the verticales are nearly perfect .. that said, it's a painting and paintings are expressions .. to me, art is about the enjoyment of making the piece: the piece is secondary and it can go to the sin bin if you don't like or you could call it your masterpiece and enjoy it for life.

 

[Bartc]

Thanks, Wayne. I agree about the piece being its own self - that's the kind of Impressionism/Expressionism style I paint and enjoy. But viewers do react to realism when it doesn't fit their notions of accuracy. That's kind of a natural reaction.
Believe me, this isn't one I would hang as a great one. It's adequate and was fun to do, and that's enough for me.
My "masterpieces" are others. ;=)

 

[ntl]

Nice piece!

 

[Bartc]

For the record - and definitely NOT by way of excuse, because I have identified my problem - here is a comparison. Note that the actual photo is not from the same viewpoint, but it does illustrate the sags and the deviations form the vertical and horizontal lines in the real structure. On the far right is my painting as corrected in Photoshop for my lousy photography, which did introduce a little distortion of verticals mostly. In the middle is the painting but simply rotated about 3-4 degrees clockwise, which demonstrates that the verticals are pretty consistent with one another and with the actual structure.

What this illustrates is a problem I've identified with how I use my easels that seems to creep into many of my paintings with strongly identifiable verticals. It's something I promised myself to work on and failed to do so this time around. I paint sitting down with a tripod mounted pochade system. The painting surface then is always a bit tilted on either my left of right side. It causes a vertical shift that for some reason I don't see in the field, but shows up consistently in many of my paintings.

So you are right if it seems "off" to you, because it is. All the rest is meant as an impression and not a photorealistic rendering.