Oil Painting of Cedar Tree by Abby Laux
The Cedar, 2014, oil, 11 x 14 in.

cypress3 cedar_sketchesThe corn field in front of our house has a lone cedar tree on its edge, and when the winter sun sets in the valley, one strip of sunlight illuminates it and the golden field right before dusk.  I started this painting at a workshop I taught at the French Lick Artisan Gallery this past winter.  I really happy with the final result of muted blues and yellows.  It is a good to branch out from the very green paintings of summer.  When teaching the workshop, we started with the traditional monochromatic underpainting-this one in burnt sienna.  Then, I blocked in the large areas of color (bottom image) and continued to add detail on top.  When composing the painting, I was intrigued and played around with the overlapping diagonal curves.