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ART CHALLENGE #
Finalist
Deborah Tilby British Columbia, Canada, The Solitary Tree, oil, 24 x 24" (61 x 61 cm)
My Inspiration
I have always loved the soft subtle greens,
violets and blue-greys of winter so this spot
really appealed to me. I have painted here
many times in all seasons and various times
of day and never tire of it.
My Design Strategy
Although the tree holds the central position
and the other elements lead to it, the water,
the mud and the grassy banks are the real
subjects. I placed the tree off-centre to the
right and the water off-centre to the left.
I took care with the arrangement of all the
zigs and zags leading the eye to the tree. The
middle ground is a series of horizontals and
I designed a sky with clouds that echo the
diagonals in the foreground.
My Working Process
My working surface was MDF primed
with acrylic gesso and toned in a pale
transparent earth red. I don’t have a set
way of doing things but the following is
my usual way of working. I sketched in the
placement of the shapes with diluted earth
red and then premixed most of the colours
(approximately). I then took an old bristle
filbert and scumbled in the large value
shapes in a full colour block-in beginning
with the darker colours and keeping the
paint thin (not thinned). As I progressed
through the painting, I used softer brushes
and thicker paint. I made liberal use of my
painting knife, sometimes carefully as with
the grasses, but sometimes using it to “mess
up” areas that seemed too tight.
My process is never straightforward; rather,
it involves a lot of back and forth, scraping
off, cutting in, wiping off, restating, etc.
For example, here I painted the main parts
of the tree and the hills before the sky. The
sky was then blocked in cutting into the
tree and hill shapes that were restated, then
a bit more sky and so on, only stopping
when it felt right. I always like to have
variety in mark making: areas of thin washy
colour, and some scraped or scratchy areas
juxtaposed with knife and brush work and
thicker paint.
Contact Details
» Email: [email protected]
» Website: http://www.deborahtilby.com
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