are now
painted,
and it's time
to add the
water and
the sky!
background. Mostly I just wanted some of the reds
elsewhere in the painting. Also, the painting was
going to be a little surreal anyway, and I thought it
would be a good idea to eliminate some of the
"springtime" and make it a little more "timeless."
have with the sky and pond painted in
before the cherry boughs were added.
The glare is bad and so is the angle.
Well, I'm learning. You can still see
what a big difference it made to add the
sky and water. It's gone from
interesting but a bit bland to being
really beautiful. You can see clearly in
this picture that the pink tree is too
bright. It subsequent pictures, you will
see how I attempted to tone it down.
The reflections of color in the water
weren't intended to be completely
realistic. I was just using the water to
bring some of the colors down into the
bottom of the painting.
The painting desperately needed some
extreme foreground to balance it out.
Drawing out the branches and flowers
wasn't so bad, but painting them took
much longer than I anticipated. It was the
longest, most boring part of the whole
painting. I kept telling myself, as I
painted each petal on each flower, that it
didn't need to be exact. This is the part
where I really prayed that God would
give me patience and perseverance to
keep at it and get it done!
up of the
cherry boughs
in varying
stages of paint.
The bird
doesn't look
very cute yet,
but it will soon.
painted, I had to go back and touch up
other things. The pink tree still needed
some work. Tree trunks got touched up
and more textural details were added.
Some of the details of the geisha needed
to be brought out. The highlights on the
bridge were made brighter and the
shadows were made deeper. I had to
bring more yellow/orange from the sky
down into the water, and add more
details to the bushes. The large tree on
the right side of the painting especially
needed more work, along with the willow.
I added a lot of leaf detail to the willow
and fixed the highlights on the trunk of the
willow. I also added highlights to the
rocks. That was a significant difference.
shadows, added more details. I made
the clouds brighter and more realistic
to help balance out the cherry
boughs at the bottom.
paint. It was a welcome relief from all those blossoms!
My clients wanted some kind of animal- suggestions
ranged from birds to koi to possibly a panda. Out of
the birds, cranes and ducks were high on the list
because of the cultural relevance. However, such a
bird was much too powerful for the painting. One of
the main requests was that the painting would be
"peaceful." The sound of water and of songbirds are
particularly relaxing. And that is the story of the bird.
paying for custom framing. Sometimes artists just paint around the sides of the canvas. In this
case, that wasn't enough. It needed a little extra "pop." A little trivia note: I almost forgot to sign it!
