Saturday, September 10, 2011

"OPA at the Mission"

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This is Mission San Jose in San Antonio, TX. I got up early yesterday and drive two hours to attend the plein air paint-out organized by the Oil Painters of America. It was a hot day, so I found a spot with shade. When I started, the Mission was completely in shadow. I only can see a dark silhouette. Apparently, It wasn't good for a painting. However by observing the movement of the sun, I could anticipate the right side of the Mission will be lit in two hours. So I worked on composition, perspectives, and proportion for a while. I was right. Around noon time, the right side was lit up beautifully. So I had this painting portraying the image in my mind. The experience with this painting makes me think: following the law of nature we can get what we need much easier than conquering nature destructively to get what we want. Unfortunately, human did too much of the latter.

2 comments:

JanettMarie said...

Clever, now that is some observational skills at work!
Nice painting!

Logan said...

Very nice plein air, my man. How long did this take to paint, aside from the couple hours you spent on composition, perspectives, and proportion? This is a little bigger board than you usually paint on, right? Did it take you longer than normal?