Saturday 21 April 2012

Bluebell Wood Again

In light of the comment by Ann............the bluebells and the water are the best bits.......it got me thinking that maybe the painting would be much better with only the best bits. I messed around with a pair of cardboard angles to see if a smaller portrait format would do the trick, by cropping off the tops of the trees. Unfortunately, this took away quite a bit of the flower work on both sides. Next, I tried cropping off the tops of the trees but making it a landscape format, as this kept all of the flowers. The result was too little tree trunks and they looked a bit silly sat in the top of the painting. Leaving it a while to decide the best course of action, I remembered that I had a square pine frame for which I have never had any use, so I dug it out, measured the aperture, and used the cardboard angles to see what I got with the appropriate amount of cropping. This was much better. I now had a reasonable amount of tree trunk, without the distracting 'arch' effect from the two outer trees, and the muddy foliage has disappeared, but I have retained all the splatter effects and the water. So thank you so much Ann for making your comments. They were really helpul in making me see the wood for the trees........sorry!
Its a useful lesson to remember for the future, when I find myself liking some passages and being disappointed with others. Tha original painting can be seen in the previous post.


It's now called 'Bluebell Bank' and now all that remains is to sand down and paint the frame antique white!

4 comments:

  1. Glad to have been of help. Really like what you have done and am sure in the frame you talk about it will look great.

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  2. Thanks Ann, once again. Yes, now it is in a freshly painted frame with a double mount it looks quite good. Maybe a little traditional, but I do like the square format, and will look to using that again

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  3. That is a great improvement. Just shows what can be done with a little thought and creativity.

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  4. Thanks Peter. I am anazed at the difference. We will be chopping pictures up for all we are worth, now, in the hope of producing something reasonable!

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