Walk Into Spring - Epilogue

Pear Trees on Ockley - The Final Chapter


"Walk Into Spring" © 2007 Karen Mathison Schmidt
16 x 20 • acrylic on 3/4" cradled gessobord • sides painted dark brown
The cradled back allows for hanging flush against the wall
Gloss varnish for protection and ease of cleaning • sold unframed

To start at the beginning, scroll down to the third entry below this one and work your way up. The previous three entries are taken from my art journal during the making of this painting. Thought you might enjoy seeing the process - maybe you artists can identify with my frustrations and/or triumphs - please let me hear your comments!

I took the reference photos for this several weeks ago on a late afternoon walk, just as the pear trees were coming into bloom. A couple of times during the painting of it, I walked over to the place to study the shadows and street color in real life.

After living with the signed painting for a day or so, I decided the color in the shadows needed a little more dimension to further distinguish the foreground from the sunny distance. Ooo, there’s something about that phrase I really like, “The Sunny Distance.” Not a bad name for a band, maybe. Anyway, I added a glaze of reddish magenta to the grassy areas in the foreground, making the bluish areas more purplish, complementary to the yellow areas in the distance. The sunny distance. The result is that said sunny areas look ... well ... sunnier! The painting looks a lot more balanced to me now -- thanks to my studies in The Yin/Yang of Painting (Zhang and Woolley, 2000)

I used mostly brushwork on the distance, and brushes and painting knives on the foreground parts. I finished the painting with a glossy clear acrylic varnish for protection and easy cleaning. Here's a detail:

Walk Into Spring - Episode I

Pear Trees on Ockley - The Adventure Begins


I started on the pear trees painting today. One of the things I read somewhere recently that has helped me most: in almost all paintings from life, the first thing you see should be the last thing you paint! Keeping this in the front of my mind helps me from getting caught up in painting details too early.


On this painting, though, I decided to get the treetops mostly finished before starting on the shadowy part in the foreground, because painting the trees is what I’m most apprehensive about in this painting. I just looked up “apprehensive” – it means “anxious or fearful that something bad or unpleasant will happen.” Yep, that’s the feeling I have about trying to get the trees right. So if I tackle that first, the rest of the painting should be a breeze, right?