Farm Painting(s)
When I asked my Mom what she’d like for Christmas this year, I thought maybe she would say a baking pan or a new lamp for knitting. Nope. She wanted a painting, by me, of a barn from her father’s boyhood home that would fit in a slim area of her dinning room.
Hmmmm, I thought… I haven’t painted anything that wasn’t a wall in at least 13 years. Even when I did paint it was student level at best and as a fun hobby. Since I’m 43, I can only suspect my mother is suffering from too many years of not receiving my preschool art projects. Nevertheless, I hunkered down to try to figure out a gift with a few months until Christmas.
The photo my mom sent me is above. I’m not sure if she trespassed to get it. The barn must have looked about like that when my Grandpa lived on the farm as a child, which they called “Muddy Hollow”. The outhouse is even still there, along with an old Farmall tractor.
I decided I would paint something that included both the barn from muddy hollow and the farmhouse where my Mom grew up, pictured above. My uncle and his family live in the house now, so I still have access, thankfully.
I knew my Mom wanted a painting or paintings to fit into the 20 inch spaces that flanked her back dinning room window, so I ended up with two 12″x20″ canvases. I sketched out the above for an idea of the overall composition for each canvas.
A blank canvas (or two) is pretty intimidating. I started by sketching the buildings in pencil in about the place I wanted to see them in relation to the overall composition. The canvases I purchased were 12″x20″.
Then I went over everything with a fine tipped sharpie, using a postcard as a straight edge to firm up the lines. At that point, the pencil was starting to fade and I wanted a firmer guideline as I started to paint. I mixed up a big batch of blue and roughed in the sky behind the farmhouse as well as behind the hill in Muddy Hollow.
As I roughed in the grass area I started to have doubts about the large amount of canvas I had dedicated to grassy area. I was really just crossing my fingers that the grass and foreground flowers would end up working out at the end of the day.
I must have used 7 or 8 different colors in the grass detail. After looking through multiple youtube tutorials on grass, I decided on a technique that wouldn’t be overly detailed and would involve lots of fun with a fan brush.
I made up the flowers for interest. My uncle lives on the farm on the left and absolutely mows the grass, so he’ll be horrified by how it’s been let go in this rendition, but I love the way the long grass and wild flowers look in a more wild setting in that part of the country. I did need to do a little research to find out what kinds of flowers are wild there. I settled on painting purple coneflowers, asters, brown eyed susans and queen anne’s lace as all are common in the area.
I am realizing I should have taken a final photo of the paintings. I did give this to my mother before Christmas. She almost cried, but then did proceed to re-paint her entire room around where she ended up putting these pieces.