Making Progress

Red Barn, 2012-2014

For the last three years, my friend Christine and I have painted the old red barn on Highway 287.  It's been very instructive to compare our newest paintings to the older ones, to see how we're coming along in terms of making progress.

The first couple of times I painted this scene, in 2012 and 2013, I used oils and a smaller format. In the latest rendition (on the right), I've switched to watercolors.  A bit of a difference, yes? Even though I saw much better compositional opportunities, I had to go with the same view for comparison's sake; adding in the surrounding foliage to make it a little less static. So there's some improvement there. I like to think I paid more attention to my values and perspective. It's also interesting to note the 2014 version was done under trickier weather circumstances that the previous versions: partly cloudy, where the sun alternates from light to dim, bright to shade, over and over like someone's playing with a switch.

But no matter; it was a fun time.  We even had several more friends show up. I think there were ten of us in all! Here's a little movie of us doing our thing on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLYCJm6TZyw&index=1&list=PLw7lGmDSVXx3w4ZSzI4hTwzQTtKN-Ef0Q

There's been some talk going around that the barn might be dismantled or removed, but I hope it's just a rumor.  It'd be great fun to keep painting it, year after year, honing our skills until we get it just right.