Sustained Investigation #14

In my art, you can clearly see a bunch of beautiful birch trees growing around a mountain and stream. The story told is it's a random beautiful discovered view while adventuring off into the woods during quarantine (due to COVID-19). I chose to make this because I find this to be a beautiful scene with great detail and natural life. During these difficult times that I am having in quarantine, it made me want to appreciate nature's beauty even more. I wanted to show that every little detail matters. So after I made this painting I, too, went outside during quarantine time and discovered so much beauty in the woods behind my house. I simply wanted to capture one of these types of moments of peace and observing. By creating paintings that are even more beautiful than where I live, I can capture the different views of beauty in nature that people all-around may be seeing during their quarantine adventures. This time I chose to create birch trees because I wanted to change the type of forests I was creating and experimenting with it.

My work was made by first creating a sketch/base with chalk pastels. Chalk pastels are messy but I've discovered that they make a great base when I am figuring out the placement of my colors. If I mess up a color I can simply blend it with other colors to make it disappear. Then I added acrylic paint over the top of the chalk pastels once I had each color in place. I chose to use acrylic paint because it's thick and easy to create lots of layers of color and layer it on different materials. I used white, light grey, dark grey, and black acrylic paint to create each birch tree. With three of the birch trees, I glue real birch tree bark under in order to have a relating material and add more detail. I've discovered that birch tree bark and glue mixture are difficult to paint over. So with patience and lots of layers, I built up the colors on the birch trees over the bark. Once I liked how the trees were placed I went into the sky and added plain blue acrylic paint. I went in with a darker mixed blue color towards the top of the sky and blended it down to a lighter blue. I added little white clouds to add more detail. I worked on the grass every now and then throughout the process of this piece. The grass has many layers of different shades of green. I used a very small brush to create each individual stroke of grass all throughout. I layered at least 4 different shades of green until I was satisfied with the results. With the water, I also layered the blue colors multiple times. I couldn't decide what type of blue I wanted to create or what type of brush strokes. Until finally I mixed different shades of blue and added shadows and highlights throughout. Each ripple was from a single brush stroke. I then went over with a large brush with watered down acrylic paint in light blue and blended the ripples. I added shadows to the grass in front of the trees and highlights to the water. These little details helped bring this piece to life. Shadows and highlights give art a more realistic look.

The process of creating my art included a variety of different colors layered and becoming more detailed and realistic. My project evolved once I added the smaller details such as the flowers and mushrooms it looked more realistic. Most of my art had just grass but in many forests, there are smaller signs of life amongst the grass. This time I decided to add little plants. I like how the birch tree shavings are real and relate directly to the painting of birch trees. This makes my painting feel more real and alive as well as more textured. My next steps could be to continue adding layers of color and detail as well as more life amongst the grass and trees. I am going to base my future artwork off of the success of this piece in order to continue to grow.