I recently sold one of my favorite paintings, ‘Bubbling Trail’. It found a nice home here in Omaha, NE. The gentleman who purchased it from me was kind enough to share why it appealed to him. I don’t paint and tell, so I’ll just say it’s always wonderful to hear from people why a particular piece resonated so strongly with them. I get it. I have a few pieces in my personal collect that really speak to me. I remember being drawn to them in some odd way.
I thought I’d share a couple of background photos from ‘Bubbling Trail’. The first one here is from a friend that snapped this shot and posted it to her instagram account. It was the basis for my painting. This trail is from the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, PA I walked over to the trail on a number of occasions when I was painting, but decided to stay true to the way she captured it.
The trail was about a 5 minute walk from the main building at the Himalayan Institute (where I worked and lived) At any time I could step out of the building an be in the middle of a field or forrest.
You can see in the photo that there are quite a few branches and fallen limbs strewn around the stream. During heavy rain this would be raging. The trees in this region include a lot of Ash, Maple and Pin Oak, but the most abundant tree on the 500 acre property was the Eastern Hemlock, a tall draping spruce. The green trail is lined with these Hemlocks. In the mid spring, before summer, the trail would dry out and all the pine needles would create this beautiful tan walkways, lined with green, moss covered boulders.
If you visit the link here, you can see some shots of the pond that the stream feeds into…. and additional shots of the area to get a feel for the beauty that surrounded the setting for this original acrylic painting.
The second photo is the underpainting I began with. I decided to use a complimentary color (red) as my underpainting. It served as a nice based, capturing the earth tones and ground cover that all the moss covered on the rocks, as well as the creek bed that peaks up from beneath the water.