Yellow Point Arbutus

There likely aren't many landscape painters who, having seen arbutus trees, are able to resist painting them. Certainly I cannot. The motivation behind this one was somewhat akin to, well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I am keen to get moved to Vancouver Island where these trees are plentiful. If the Universe insists on keeping us on the Alberta prairie I'll just paint the island landscape and consider it a form of visualization.

January 23rd, closing in on the finish of YELLOW POINT ARBUTUS in The Art Room at Linderman Law, Claresholm

        

It's been a few years (eight to be exact) since I've painted anything as large as this so it was time. In a most gentle fashion I worked on it for only a few hours in the afternoons for about three weeks. Here is the progression of my first painting of 2016 ...

Day one, I drew the arrangement of trees directly on the canvas using a brush and oils colours, burnt umber and burnt sienna 

Several days later it looked like this

I added the stick branch in the space on the right, but I didn't feel it enhanced the painting in any way so I removed it as well as the grasses in the bottom right ...

  

Only refinement to the foreground left to go



To me the beauty of this piece is in the intricate, dancing upper branches, the soft light of the leaves and gentle background. I could have happily stopped at painting just them but I felt the need to ground these exquisite trees which made the foreground necessary. It was this foreground that gave me the most grief, if I'm honest other paintings go this same route for me. It needed to remain in shadow, so as not to distract from the light above, and yet it had to have interest. Finally, exhausted from pushing paint around I had to say "Enough, it's finished!" ...

YELLOW POINT ARBUTUS   oil   24" x 36"

I have had opportunities to paint these trees en plein air as well as to portray them in other studio works. Many thanks to Tom and Mary for the time spent at their place on Yellow Point, a broad forested peninsula on Vancouver Island that juts out into the waters of Stuart Channel in the Strait of Georgia which is mostly undeveloped with some rural, country living. I scored the photographic reference for this painting while we were on a forest romp with them last February. You will find the photo here on this blogpost.