Tuesday, January 22, 2013

A Warm Day in January

Tracks, 13x24  (click on image to zoom)
Just before the recent arctic blast arrived, I grabbed some warm January sunshine at Horton's Farm.  Sometimes I can really get into all this global warming.

With the sun low in the sky, a line of trees off to the right painted their self-portraits on the land as long lavender shadows.  If all my subject matter painted itself, I guess I'd be out of a job.  Actually, that's how Peter Zalinger, one of the professors at The Lyme Academy, used to describe working from direct observation.  In life drawing class, he used to say that if you got enough reference points in the right places, it would "draw itself."  While I never achieved that level of perfection, I still hear those words in my mind when struggling with drawing issues.