April 2021

The month of April saw the return of live participation at the local Senior Activity Center where I teach a small art class. The Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020 and 2021 shut it down for over a year along with so, so many other activities of life. Isolation from social activities can be a problem for retirement-aged folks anyway. A year of the kind of extreme isolation we have experienced has made this so much worse. So, I was thrilled to get back and see this fun group of folks seeking to learn and grow as artists just like me. Because it was April and we were hopeful of great weather, we initially planned to have a Plein Air session of sketching and painting outside the Senior Center. But a late season cold snap changed our plans. Instead, I snapped a photo of the scene and we came indoors to warm up.

We talked about the importance of choosing a composition when drawing or painting outdoors, using a viewfinder to crop your view and deciding what best fits within the picture plane of your working surface. We talked about finding an interesting pattern of shapes and a variety of values. We talked about blocking-in values to create a pattern that serves as the framework of the final piece. The arrangement of rocks creates a strong diagonal of a variety of color and values and the bright Spring grasses contrast against the deep distant woods.

The rocks presented a challenge as they are really just a jumbled up mass of color in light and shade. I made a special effort to work in the loosest possible way. Ultimately, I added lots of small details paying close attention to values and carving out the glowing
pops of yellow with the contrasting darks in the background.

TITLE: Springtime in Trussville Park