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Last week a friend and I went plein air painting.  It was a perfect spring day where the temperature was just right and all the trees were bursting into bud.  There is a brief window of time when the greens are fresh and infused with yellow.   In my painting I wanted to capture the saturation of the green and the sunlight and how the color was reflecting into everything.

I chose an old gnarly tree as my subject. I loved how the light skimmed the trunk and the color of the sunlight, sky, and grass reflected onto the underside of the thick branches.  The building behind the tree was cast in shade; it was close in color and value to shadows on the large branches and acted as a backdrop to the lit edge of the trunk.  The sky was a soft blue and the buds on the trees were unfurling in a speckled haze of reds and yellow-green.  In the distance the ocher earth was plowed into furrows and a stand of young trees stood veiled in newly sprouted green.

Reference photo taken at the start of the painting session

I snapped a photo for later reference and began to paint.  We worked for a couple of hours and during that time the building came into full sun and the light crawled across the tree as the leaves unfurled further.  I did not get to finish but had the bones of what I wanted.

Painting at the end of plein air session

The next day I looked at my painting and at my reference.  The photo looked flat and showed little of the light and reflecting color.   I turned to my memory to continue the painting.  My palette was still wet and all that I described above went through my head as I painted the haze of red and green buds with the bits of sky showing though and the grayed stand of trees in the background. 

Memory is a powerful tool for an artist.  It helps distill the idea of why you wanted to capture your subject in paint. The experience and the study of light was the idea I wanted to convey.  I don’t feel like I am finished with this image and would like to play with it in watercolor.  I will use the oil study and the photo reference but my memory will supply the transient color of a perfect spring day.

Spring Has Sprung 8x10 Oil

Below is a great quote from Degas with regards to visual memory:

“It is all very well to copy what you see; it is much better to draw what you only see in memory.  There is a transformation during which the imagination works in conjunction with the memory.  You only put down what made an impression on you, that is to say the essential.  Then your memory and your invention are freed from the dominating influence of nature.  That is why pictures made by a man with a trained memory are almost always remarkable works.”                          

                                                                                                                                                           -Degas