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| Enshrouding Fog, pastel on board by Adriana Meiss |
This is one of the paintings included in the
A Dialogue with Nature exhibit, and this post is about how it came to be.
The original painting (below), was started on location during the third day of the Adirondack Plein Air Festival in July. The painting was progressing well until the cloud blanket broke up into puffs that kept on changing the sunlit and shaded areas. My struggle with the changing conditions became so bad that midway I just quit. I saved the painting simply because I knew I could finish it at home.
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| Original painting done en plein air |
Once home, I saw things differently. The composition bothered me mainly because there were two equal masses of trees on both sides. So I started brushing off trees and the idea of a foggy scene germinated.
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| Playing with the painting... |
During that trip to the Adirondacks I saw so many foggy bogs and marshes that I really wanted to paint, but couldn't because of a bad location (too close to a main road) but also because how fast those conditions change. So I took the opportunity to develop this idea. In the stage below, you might be able to see the ghost of a dead tree I was considering placing on the left,
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| Getting a better idea of where I'm going with it... |
I'm happy I was able to save the painting, and also happy for having taken pictures at different stages of the process, because I still see some good things from the original composition that might be worth developing some other time.
