In an effort to up my “en plein air” game, I’m going to do a few sessions this summer focused on simplification. The plan is to either find scenes that are lacking details and complexity, or zoom in on the focal area of a detailed scene and cut out the noise in an effort to simplify.
The Preble Shed is an example of the former approach, namely it ain’t complicated… it’s a shed. However, I spent a lot of time also streamlining the background, almost ignoring what trees were actually in the background. I also made a point to blend, perhaps even muddle, the tree edges into the sky. I think it worked pretty well and added atmospheric perspective, something that has eluded many of my previous efforts. Progress!
Not surprisingly, the shed itself was the real challenge. It has a thick coating of paint because there were a number of re-dos as I struggled to find a good light and dark color pairing. I noticed that so many professional artists who do sun-drenched urban landscapes tend to focus on white or very light yellow, using a contrasting blue-purple for the shadowed sides of the structure, which works really well, but honestly strikes me as a little boring. My goal with the shed was to use some hues that could be incorporated into other elements of the landscape – namely the flanking tree in the foreground, the fence in the background, and the sunlit grasses. I went with orange, about the 50th attempt, and can’t tell if I stopped there because I was satisfied or just worn out trying.
Thanks for reading!
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Art Bern 
Great job, Bern! The painting really holds together well. And reporting your thought process is always way interesting to me.
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