Painting Cottonwoods with Shanna Kunz

Description

Oh Those Cottonwoods! Exploring Complimentary Color In The Landscape

This full length instructional DVD will take off from my concept lesson in color palettes. We will be working with the complimentary palette of Blues/violets and Oranges/yellow. As I stated in the concept lesson, your color choice can be in “families” rather than exact color opposites. I use Naples Yellow Light in the painting quite a bit and deepens my oranges/yellows with my favorite moderating color Raw Umber Violet.

If you have spent much time looking at any of my work, you know I love those Cottonwood Trees! I love the abstract shapes of them, I love the sky holes, I love that they are rough and wooly. There is also a rhythm to them that feels like musical timing to me, like a bass note moving consistently across the format. I have played horizontal again vertical with the grassy field in a way that imitates the complimentary palette that hopefully leaves some tension and movement through a very peaceful scene. I thought I might put a cow or two in, but changed my mind as the trees are my focus point and a cow might take away from that.

I did start with a notanizer thumbnail to simplify the shapes. The thumbnail helped me make the decision to leave out any sky for drama.