Sun Lake

12x12 Oil

This piece was an adventure into a more simplified style of representational art than I am used to painting. I participated in a drawing class for the purpose of learning how to simplify a scene and render it in its various shades of dark and light, or values.
The idea is that once you've designed a pleasing composition, and rendered its values correctly in a thumbnail sketch, you have given yourself a sound foundation for diving into a painting. "Sun Lake" was based on one of my drawings of a river that drifted around a bend with a bit of a lake glimpsed beyond.

In my drawing, I got kind of pulled into that thin streak of lake back there, and just felt like painting it. This is the result of following that unexpected impulse. I like the way the painting emerged. The process -- supported by my favorite Michael Hoppe station on Pandora -- gifted me with long zen-like moments in the Zone, a place I have come to know as one of life's greatest and most secret gifts. Enjoy!