This week I finished the painting! I worked for a few hours on the weekend and then used my studio time on Wednesday to finish the piece. The main idea was creating foliage that had the same mark as the cliff side but also stood out from it and demonstrated depth. I decided to use my mark, pulling the oil paint with a palette knife, in a circular pattern evoking a more organic form that mirrors foliage. Something that was really important to me and I feel like I continued through the painting was the use of arbitrary color. I struggled with gaining the motivation to paint this landscape. I worked too precisely on the upper right portion of the canvas which caused stress and made me try to avoid painting the rest. But as I went forward, I placed the paint more freely on the canvas and let emotion, rather than a strict adherence to realism, drive the painting. I found that this method matched the content of the painting better, as I wanted to portray the emotions I feel going on a trip with my family. 

This week I fixed the bottom right portions of the painting and continued working on the top right portion. It looks like a still have a lot to go and I do, but the good thing is that I am almost done with all the rock. There is a lot of foliage that covers the cliff and I will work on that and the rest of the rock this weekend. I can't tell if I like this painting yet, I keep changing my mind. 

This is the process post for last week. I started off by drawing a rough outline of the most prominent forms of natural bridge. I then went in with oil paint and made a nice blue sky gradient using my palette knife to create an interesting texture. I then decided to use a lot of color contrast on the cliff side. I went in with an indigo and accentuated the lighter parts of the cliff by using white and some arbitrary colors: yellow, orange, and pink. I think I like it but there are some parts on the bottom right side that turned out too green and I need to fix that. This painting is taking longer than I thought it would.