Summer Evening 1

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Barns & Black-Eyed Susans

Well, it’s not winter yet, and here is a painting to celebrate these last days of summer we’ve been enjoying. I did this one two years ago in July, in the dead heat of summer! I still love the whole composition, old barns with country flowers catching rays of sun from an early-evening sky, though now I see ways I could improve how I painted it.

Regretfully, I don’t have step-by-step pictures, but here’s a brief overview of how I painted it. The barns were done in watered-down acrylic paint, hence the watercolor effect, which doesn’t distract from the foreground. I really layered the paint onto the flowers, shades of golden yellow, lemon yellow, yellow-orange, and maroon, to try and shape the petals. I mixed extra yellow into the grass greens to reflect the sun, also echoing it in yellow washes on the barn roofs. I wasn’t really happy with how the sky came out, the clouds are such a dark blue they look like storm clouds almost. The problem was using ultramarine blue, which just doesn’t mix with white that well, but I had no other blue at the time. But I still love the painting. Coming soon…“Summer Evening” finished and framed!