June 29, 2009

Red at the Market





Acrylic on Canvas Panel Ω
Everywhere I go in Northern California I see another old red truck. This one's at the Farmer's Market in Healdsburg. Finally I've painted one a bit warmer. It's the thing that was always missing from my other red truck paintings. (the photo here is not as warm as the painting is).
The first person I showed it to couldn't understand why I put those snowy mountains in the backgroun. They're actually the umbrellas and tent tops of the market.
This reminds me of something Tim Horn said about, that even though you should strive to paint what you see, sometimes it's more important to make things "read" better so that the viewer can immediately understand what it is they're seeing, what's in front of what etc.
I may give this another go, but I'm not sure how I'd change the background, other than eliminating it.

1 comment:

Edward Burton said...

Great one - I knew that the background was umbrellas right away.