3 paintings

anwesha

Hello everyone,

I painted these in the last few weeks. Painting water is HARD! It needs so much discipline, hopefully will master it one day. Painted all of these froma laptop screen, another thing i want to get used to. The reference photo of the boat painting was taken by my brother-in-law in India at the place of confluence of 3 rivers (at the Sangam, Prayagraj, quite a spiritual place). The other two are from my neighborhood, by my walking path... beside the Mississippi river. There are many things I wish I could do better in all of these paintings.. Please feel free to comment or suggest...

"No takers, on a lazy winter afternoon", 9"x12", Oil on gessoboard
Here I wish I had painted the clouds a bit lower
 

"Flooded forest floor", 9"x12", Oil on gessoboard
This also was an afternoon scene and the reference was very chaotic. I started the painting same day as taking the photo, on a whim and was pulling my hair out in between. Had to omit a lot of twigs and shrubs to make it easier to read and keep my sanity as well. This is again a winter scene and so all bare trees.



"A light and sound show", 12"x16", Oil on canvas
My intention for this painting was the menacing clouds, and the brown waters of the Mississippi and an anchored boat, but I could not make the boat placement work and look convincing. So on a whim, placed a rainbow (which we saw the same day as a flash and was gone in a few seconds). I didn't feel I was getting anywhere with this painting so started playing around and placed the lightnings.... well atleast I had fun with this one, successful or not  


Thank you for your time!
Anwesha

Richard_P

Anwesha!! These are absolutely brilliant. So well painted and such great character and interesting scenes. I am very impressed!

The second one is my favourite, love the water!

MichaelD

Beautiful @anwesha,

The first is my favourite.


I think the clouds are fine were they are
  

anwesha

Thank you so much @Richard_P .. you are really kind the second one had me questioning my reference choices   

anwesha

thank you @MichaelD the first one is my favourite too

joydeschenes

really nice @anwesha and the first is my favorite too , I especially like the water and the boats. I like the water in the second too but there’s something about the first I like best. 

tassieguy

These are excellent, @anwesha. I especially like the second one with the trees in the water.  You have rendered the water so well in this - the sky reflections are wonderful. And I love the composition of the one with the boats. In the third one -  the river painting -  I like the streak of sunlight on top of the trees and across the water. This hopeful sign contrasts with the dark clouds and lightning that make it look scary.  Sometimes it's good to play around like this and see what we end up with.

allforChrist

ALL BEAUTIFUL but the last quite literally made my jaw drop.  When I have more time I'll study them for a good bit and give you some glowing details about how much I like them.

ArtGal

Fantastic job @anwesha ! My favorite is the second one

GTO

The first is my favorite.  The second one is excellent too.  There’s an interesting clarity to that one.  The stormy one is has a dynamic feel to it.  The clouds are overwhelming but the river also has that wide expansive feel.  

Bucky

These are exquisite, @anwesha I don't know that I have a favorite -- I like them all so much -- but if I would have to pick one, the water in the second one is soooo good! Well done! 

dencal

anwesha

Beautiful work.

You are right about the difficulty in painting water. When I was ‘getting my feet wet’ I bumped into Mark Waller, who does splendid looking surf and water ripples so easily. He works in acrylic but easily translates to oil.

One of his valuable takeaways is his conceptualisation of water as a repeating series of reflecting window bands.

https://youtube.com/user/ExploreAcrylics

Waller has some good mental constructs to bring to the understanding of painting water based on astute observation. He sees water as comprising two main surface characters - a window or a mirror.

Within these main divisions are the effects of surface, substrate, sky and reflection. The angle of the surface relative to the sky and to the substrate determines the reflection or the transparency (mirror or window).

Using this basic framework Waller uses flat acrylic in ultramarine blue, thalo blue, cad yellow and titanium white to produce broadly rendered flat areas from deep blue (window of deep water) to greenish yellow (substrate, sand and weed window) with roll scumbled highlights (mirroring the sunlight on the foam and froth) and broad areas of white glaze representing flats behind the wave. Each band has a different hue with varying values and sizes, front to back. The entire surface can then be easily ‘decorated’ with gleaming ripples and or foam.

Keeping the wave direction consistent and a careful eye on the diminishing perspective Waller creates very realistic water surfaces and wave forms. So impressed with his results, I have bought many of his DVDs, and keeping an eye out for the regular workshops he holds across Australia.

https://youtu.be/vH8xAeu6njY

Denis

Gary_Heath

Great work,  I like all of them.  Painting a rainbow in a landscape is an obvious subject, but I think not so easy to do in practice; your attempt is really very good.

Abstraction

The first is my favourite but they all have a moody feeling of gently swaying or moving water. You can feel the water in the third scurrying ahead of the storm. There is a wonderful minimalism that feels very fresh and not overworked. Class.

KingstonFineArt

@anwesha
The paintings transport me. The sense of place. The brush. The lovely brush. Not simple replication but transformation. Meaning. Expression. A breath of fresh air.

anwesha

thank you @joydeschenes , @GTO , @MichaelD   the first one hits home for me as I have had rides on such boats to cross such wide expansive rivers, and I remember my mother petrified because we were little and didn't know how to swim and there weren't life-jackets for people to wear those days... and i would look for moments when my mother wasn't watching to touch the water  sweet memories with that one..

anwesha

thank you @tassieguy @ArtGal @Bucky , I'm so glad you all and @Richard_P like the 2nd one too... it was the first among the 3 that i did, and didn't feel good enough to post in itself, so thought of slipping this one in behind a more decent one . The flood water though was so mysterious and opaque in the partly submerged forest, you couldn't tell the depth through out the floor, and knowing about the reptiles that haunt these waters and undergrowth in summer it was pretty creepy but exciting  

anwesha

@tassieguy I've never played around with my imagination as much as the third painting and that too because I wasn't able to bring out the picture i wanted to in the first place.. the water in my reference did not have much shades to depict the waves and i had minimal things to work with.. the water (closest to the viewer) still isn't how i would like it, but i've redone it like 4 times.. that's when i thought of playing around to take the focus off that part... will leave it for a fresh perspective on a new day, that sometimes works for me.

anwesha

thank you so much @allforChrist , @Abstraction @KingstonFineArt for the kind words I try my best to simplify my scenes nowadays to keep the basics enough to make sense of the surroundings, as whenever i go into details i tend to make it look quite stressed and overworked. Sometimes i wonder by my approach, am I tackling this problem or running away from it  

anwesha

Thank you so much @dencal this is a wonderful reference to study from! And i haven't heard of a better or accurate description of water, a window! fits perfectly...  At the end of the third painting i was thinking one can never define water with a few parameters, its always so different and i could never learn the full of it, the perspective, reflections, sense of depth... I saw he has discussed each one of them... i might apply it to my third painting after leaning from his videos, i feel I'm not done yet with that one. Thank you again!

anwesha

thank you @Gary_Heath ! Rainbow is a very obvious subject but among children i think... when i said I was playing around i was literally doing so  

allforChrist

@anwesha I think simplifying is a part of tackling the problem.  In Mark's painting a coffee cup video, they even choose to replace the glass table the cup is sitting on with a solid wood so that it makes more sense.

You did not run away from accuracy in color, value, and discipline, so I think there's nothing to worry about there.

pcstaples

Ditto to all of these comments. These three pieces are true works of art and are exquisite and lovely! Excellent work

anwesha

thank you so much @pcstaples

Forgiveness

Lovely works @anwesha! I have nothing more to add, it's all been said here already, congrats!

anwesha

thank you @Forgiveness

waheedkhan

Very nice

anwesha

thank you @waheedkhan

Allie

Beautiful work! I particularly love the painting with the trees ❤️

anwesha

thank you @Allie

Marinos_88

I think they're all lovely. My personal favourite is the first one. I think you've done a wonderful job at the reflections and water.

anwesha

thank you so much @Marinos_88 ... the water in that reference was very easy to read and made it easier to paint it

StephanHM

your first painting looks like some of the beach paintings i've seen from joaquin sorolla, really beautiful!

anwesha

Its probably the theme of the subject that is matching Sorolla's for that painting

Marik

Thank you @anwesha for sharing - Flooded forest floor is my favourite 

anwesha

thank you so much @Marik love sharing my works here

Lucian

Awesome works!

The first one - the water surface looks brilliant. And clouds are meant to fly high.
The second one - the abundance of details is remarkable. I can't quite tell if it's a photo of a swamp or a  forest. Never mind, I somehow missed the title.
The third one - it looks like a surrealist storm, maybe you could have added something in the foreground, like a silhouette of an animal or a person.

Keep it up!

rishi

You are an amazing artist @anwesha ! I love all your works!! and yes, the Flooded Forest Floor draws some special attention no doubt!

anwesha

@Lucian , @rishi thank you so much for your time and kind observations on these paintings

heartofengland

No takers...
Great title. Adds another layer for the viewer. Sky and water are genius. Cloud height is perfect, giving an open space, a bit like a high ceiling. The interior of the boats look unfinished. I was expecting to see the inside of the planking, the seat boards etc. The plain grey across all the boats looks unusual.

Flooded forest floor
Again, a brilliant title that helps the viewer. The yellow water with dirty blue reflections works really well. How did you avoid the trees looking 'stuck on'?

A light...
You say water, I say wheat field / prairie. The light band is gorgeous as @tassieguy pointed out. I'm not convinced by the small size of the rainbow. They seem bigger in my experience. The dark clouds and rain give an expansiveness that is hard to achieve yet similar to 'No Takers...'

Very saleable.

anwesha

Thank you for those suggestions and some very important observations @heartofengland Sadly this post is quite and old and the paintings are already varnished. 

For the second painting, your question of how to avoid trees looking stuck on, I'm not sure what you were asking, trees are stuck to the ground i mean  

For the third painting the rainbow and lightnings were all made up.. like i mentioned in the description i just stopped short of throwing away this painting as it was not working as i had hoped, but later decided to just have some fun adding the rainbows, lightnings.. fun with a failed piece is all

pcstaples

My favorite is the flooded forest floor! You are an incredible artist! I love it’s simplicity and feeling it conveys…