Skip to content

Morning glorious

Sometimes as an artist, its a good feeling to just paint colour. Lots of bright, glorious colour. And that was what I wanted to do with this latest painting of mine. I had an idea that I wanted to make the painting of something specific, but keep it as simple as possible as a composition so decided this painting was of simply a tree, grass, and sky. As the sky was going to bright vivid blues, pinks, oranges and yellows, then I decided to paint a pale pink cherry blossom as the main feature. I do love painting cherry blossom as its so fleeting and ethereal…

To start I thought a lot about the composition, and did a few thumbnail sketches to see if the tree would be better off to one side or slightly off the centre, but it made the picture more unbalanced than I wanted it to look, so I decided on the tree to be placed right in the middle of the  23.5  x 12 inch block canvas (painting down the sides as well) with the grass slightly raised in the middle, giving more of an impression of a hill and giving the tree even more importance. Even though the composition was simple, it had to create the right message.

So the composition decided, it was time to apply colour with my palette knife, thickly on the canvas, working fast to get the depth of paint on. And when that was done, it was a matter of building up colour again over it, as I didn’t want flat colour, I wanted depths of colour over colour and merging into other colours.

When the sky was done, and I was happy with it,  it was time to do the cherry blossom, and I purposely merged the beautiful pinks of the sky into it. The two as one in their shared pinkness.

I did consider painting the blossom falling to the ground as it tends to do the minute it is formed.

But then I decided to create the tree in the bare moment that it is at full perfection. Before the blossom falls.

The painting is called “Morning glory” and depicts the pure moment when the tree is at its full beauty, when it is ethereal and so pale in its gorgeous perfection. The bright colours of the sky just exaggerate its delicacy. Morning glory

11 thoughts on “Morning glorious”

Comments are closed.