Fine Art
Jun 10, 2021
Spring Thaw
At last. Yes!! At last it is spring in Edmonton. A few days ago, a good friend of mine, Jackie, went hiking in the Rainbow Ravine Park, a five minute drive from my place just off the main highway. During her hike, Jackie took some snap shots of the partly frozen Whitemud Creek and sent some pictures to me. I was captivated by one of the pictures, in particular the photograph shown below, I loved the tonal contrast between the brightly lit snow amongst the dark evergreens. The yellowish green evergreen trees on the right placed against the dark evergreens adds some drama. The “S” curve of the creek leading into the depths of the woods augments the intrigue. The dry grasses in the foreground acts as a lead into the photograph and the reflections of the trees are an added bonus.
There are however a few shortcomings to the photograph. It lacks a distinct focal spot. The panorama is too broad with lots of repetitive elements, particularly the band of similar, evergreen trees. What I needed was to crop the image to the area of interest.
This I thought was more inviting. Now all it needed was a focal spot. So I went to work on an image editing software and spent some time designing and planning. I decided on the painting, I would to add some colour to the dull brown bushes and enhance the bush at the base of the sunlit evergreen tree on left. I also decided to replace the dull muddy water with the tree reflections and reduce the size of the sunlit mound of dry grass in the foreground. The edited image is depicted below. It already looks paintable.
Now comes the more difficult task of choosing the medium, The format, and the painting size.
I decided I was going to paint using oil as the medium, on an 11”X14” linen board . The finished painting is below and also posted on the website
Thank you for following. Hope this was instructive. As always if you have any questions, just email the m to me and I will do my best to answer them,.
If you did enjoy this, please forward it to your email contacts and post it on social media for benefit of your followers. If you subscribe to my blog/newsletter, you will receive future posts in your email inbox.
Mohamed Hirji
