Debbie is a fantastic nice lady I met the previous year while in Pleasanton, near San Francisco. Talking about paintings and reference pictures she graciously sent me a picture of the view off her back porch ... lucky Debbie! Again, this was one of those studies I made on cardboard back in 2018, and gifted it to my aunty Zia Romana. It was the second painting to be framed, yuppee!
Like the Peppers, this was also painted very much "alla prima", starting with a totally untreated background.
It took a couple of days as I wanted to layer up a little to avoid mudding the colours when adding the trees in the foreground.
Colours:
Liquid White
Raw Umber
Raw Sienna,
Cobalt Blue hue
Ceruleum Blue
Sap green
Oxide of Chromium
Cadmium Yellow hue
Cadmium Red deep hue
Flake white
Paynes grey
Lamp black
Medium: "alla prima"
2 parts Turpentine
4 parts Liquin
2 parts Damar Varnish
2 parts Linseed Oil
This is how it started:
As you can see that was pretty basic, I just wanted to anchor the river shore and the distant mountain.
I then took the courage to put in the big tree on the left, not caring too much about the foliage at this point:
Although still quite basic, it was starting to take shape, but it did indeed need the trees on the left to complete the composition, and I took the "winter to summer approach", planning on adding the leaves later:
At the end I finished the canopy and dressed the trees on the right, while highlighting a little more the yellow flowers.
Now that both my dearest aunty and uncle are not with us any more, the painting is back home with me, as my boyfriend had asked (he really never liked it when I gave away my paintings).