Saturday, February 16, 2008

Amish Schoolhouse at dusk - Finished!



I've been a bit ill over the past few days (to say the least), so I haven't much felt like painting. Taylor suggested a series of paintings called the 'Percoset Diaries', but I'd rather wait until I'm in my right mind(!) to paint I think.

So instead, here's the Amish Schoolhouse at Dusk canvas which I posted a while back when it was in progress. I'm really pleased with it, and the longer it hangs in our lounge, the harder it'll be to part with. The format of a long thin canvas was really important to capture the vast skies in Pennsylvannia, with it being so flat. It has a kind of nostalgic feel to it, the colours being reminiscent, to me, of an old photograph. I'm also pleased with the composition, but that was pretty much how the scene was composed in reality - a little editing and slight moving of trees here and there, but on the whole, it's pretty true to life.

The Amish kids were playing outside the school in their usual wellies and heavy coats, beautifully silhouetted against the dusk sky. I've still got a fair few more big canvases to go with this series I think, so I'll work them up in mini studies for the daily paintings, and take it from there.