Golden Reserve – Original Watercolor & Gouache

Golden Reserve is an original Watercolor & Gouache Painting by Ellen Jean Diderich featuring golden hay bales set in a rural countryside. 

Behind the piece: Golden Reserve shows a more modern way of handling hay than we used on our farm growing up. My sister Darin and I made hay stacks instead of hay bales. After the cut hay had dried, she drove the tractor, and I ran the dump rake. I’d push the pedal down with my foot to lift the big rounded rake up to create windrows. I was also in charge of arranging hay on the wagon and making a pile. She pitched it up to the wagon or down to where I was building the stack. The compositional skills learned surely helped me become a loose artist! It took several loads to clear the field, and I used the pitchfork to hold the loosest hay in place so it wouldn’t blow off the wagon.

As I continue to paint, arranging shapes still fascinates me. Like in this piece, notice how the rhythm of the gold shapes of both the hay bales and the outbuilding connects the big shape of the horizon and the foreground like a jigsaw puzzle. A grid was used to unite and create additional pattern. There was a lake behind the trees, so I used a deep blue in the shadows to remember it.