02/07/2014 – Excavator

Beth

The other day the sun came out, which is a rarity this time of year in the Pacific Northwest. Rather than let a beautiful afternoon go to waste, my boyfriend and I decided to go for a walk. We drove to a trail they are putting in not far from our house. Although there are far prettier trails in the area, they are all surrounded by trees. This is one of the few local trails that gets any sun.

I took my camera so I could take pictures of things to paint. I figured maybe we would see some cool plants or something along the trail. It turns out the area is far more desolate than I remembered. They planted about a million trees along one side of the trail last fall, but they are all shorter than knee height. In 10 or 15 years the area is going to be gorgeous, but for now there’s not much to look at.

The trail goes behind some large warehouses through an industrial area of town. There was a bright orange excavator parked alongside the trail where they are getting ready to put in a new building. I snapped a photo of it, thinking it would make a fun painting. Even though it was pretty much the only interesting thing we saw that day, it was still great to get out and get some sunshine!

I finally got around to doing a quick painting of the excavator today. I’m trying to learn to paint without sketching, so I didn’t sketch this out beforehand. Working without a sketch is quite challenging. The painting is definitely not true to life, but I don’t mind how it came out.

Although it feels pretty foreign to me right now, I think in time I’m going to really get the hang of working without a sketch. It forces me to pay more attention to the shape of the light and dark areas rather than the outlines of the objects I’m painting.

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