Painting of the Week

Painting of the Week – Parking Place

Parking Place by Fargo Artist Ellen Jean Diederich

Simplifying a subject can be rewarding

No more Winter Blues…it’s time to enjoy the lake! Memorial Day weekend is on its way! Beyond the weekend work of gardening & putting in boat lifts etc., this holiday promises joy. Just think, you’ll soon be soaking up sun.  Best wishes to all of you for a wonderful summer!  I certainly like to paint summer pieces. This painting reminds me of my husband Paul maneuvering the boat near the cattails along Fish Lake, past the sand bar on Pelican Lake.

I painted this acrylic painting thinking of simplification. Surprisingly, this very limited palette of lime green, baby blue and white “which sounds horrible to me” worked here.  Underneath the transparent greens, dark shapes from a previously rejected idea showed through making them rich in color. The spacing and proportions of the horizontal blue bands are what makes the piece.  I carefully worked on getting the texture of the water ripples so I wouldn’t have to redo the green. The whites in the boats make a distinct center of interest. This experiment worked out!

 

My group is busy painting and learning about color in my Joy of Color workshop this week.  Take some time for yourself and sign up for my Beginning Watercolor Workshop July 23-26th and learn to paint.  Painting can truly be a fun hobby or more…if you are crazy about it like me.