Forging a Path

Last year, when we had a summer, we took a number of photos of the kids at play in the fields around the house. A nice, simple composition which utilises light effects rather than detail, I painted this one on a crimson ground as there is not much of that primary in the painting itself, and I hoped to conteract this by using red as a ground, and occasionally it filters through.

"Forging a path" Oil on canvas 20" x 16"

The light streaming through the trees was a last minute addition, having showed the 'completed' image to the wife, she asked "is it finished?" as the initial composition had a break in the trees through which the sky could be seen, and when this was portrayed on canvas had the resemblence to a very pale sky-blue blob in the middle of the trees (her words, not mine)... I had to agree with her, it looked - well wrong. So I scraped back the blob, darkened it out and slapped in some lime green which I smeared across the canvas, all of this must have taken about 15 minutes, from her appraisal to the finished article. It just shows what can be achieved given the need.