Sunday, January 27, 2013

Shades of Tuscany, part I

The palette of colors with which God painted the Italian landscape is an artist's dream.  Grapes, olives, grasses, cypress trees, rolling hills ... all make up the lovely shades of the Tuscan countryside.  

In this image (from our 25th anniversary trip!), my goal was to remember the colors I felt, rather than the colors the camera reproduced. 
 

I started by cropping the image to a square format because ... well ... to be honest, I had a square panel that I wanted to use.  Fortunately, this particular scene has lots of great possibilities for composition (next week I'll show my 12x36).  I love how the fence posts and undulating hills lead your eye from the bottom right, in a "z" shape, up to the center of interest.

Okay, colors.  This is where my heart remembered what my eyes didn't see -- the rich glow of the earth and dried grasses that served as a foundation for the dark blue-green cypress trees and the mossy-blue olive trees.  The distant blue hills were the perfect backdrop. 
Here's my little study:
 


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