Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Live Oak

8" x 10" oil on gessoed masonite
$195.00 + $10. s/h
please contact me if interested

Until my recent trip to Texas, I didn't know what a "live oak" was.  I follow the blogs of several artists from Austin and often see these gorgeous trees in their paintings.  What I didn't realize was that these gorgeous trees always have leaves, thus the name "live" oak.  In Colorado we have scrub oaks, short, thin, "scrubby" looking trees which lose their leaves in the fall (creating great fall colors, but not great winter paintings.)  A live oak drops leaves individually as new leaves push their way out, this was explained to me by Laurel Daniel's husband.

Anyway, for this piece I combined what I learned in Laurel's workshop with how I paint.  I think that's one of the benefits of workshops, combining what you learn w/ what already works for you.  So, I started this piece with a value understudy in the tree and land area, but not under the sky.  Then, I used my normal palette, not the limited palette from the workshop.  And, I went back to cleaning my brushes regularly, not using lots of brushes.  I'm happy with the results, and have several more live oak paintings to post!

And, if you are like me and not from Texas so you didn't know what "hill country" was....look at that hill on the left side of the land!

6 comments:

Debbi Smith Rourke said...

Lovely painting! Austin is on the edge of the Hill Country. So you really have to go to Fredericksburg area to see. Know it was raining the day Peter went. That is where you see lots of rolling hills - albeit LOW rolling compared to Colorado. But seeing the stacks of low rolling hills is lovely. Most of Texas is so flat, we love it.

Karen Bruson said...

Pam,
Gorgeous, gorgeous job! Love the brushwork in the tree.

Nancy B. Hartley said...

Beautiful! Love the brushstrokes, when the painting is enlarged. Very Van Gogh like!

Dean H. said...

Beautiful painting, Pam! I really like how the underlying red peeks through the tree. Love the values and palette.

Pam Holnback said...

Thanks Debbi, I thought we were in Hill Country. I'll have to come back and see more.

Karen, Thanks so much!

Nancy, You are so good about enlarging these, I need to do that more often!

Thanks Dean, I like using this value underpainting.

Laurel Daniel said...

Bill loved hearing that he made it onto your blog! Those live oaks are a grand species - your painting turned out great.