Green House, Fruitlands

Green House, Fruitlands

8"x10" oil on Raymar panel

 The painting at the end of my first session, and sun is now behind the house.

Last Friday and again on Tuesday I worked on this painting at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA. Fruitlands is a beautiful park with historic buildings on the site of the unsuccessful utopian community of the 19th century transcendentalists. In addition to the museum exhibits, and a fine restaurant, people come here to walk and to see the wonderful views across to Mount Wachusett and beyond. They have a plein air program, where artists get an annual membership for donating a painting done on the site. Above is the second painting I've done there.

I've been using a new tool that helped me choose this scene and get a good composition. It's called Value Viewer, and I use it on my iphone. My favorite feature is the notan view, which lets you check the composition without the distraction of color or gray-scale nuances. Below is the notan view from Value Viewer of my first composition choice, note how the light lean-to on the right drags your eye out of the picture. A different shot, which includes the shadow side of the lean-to is much better, see bottom image.  Thanks, Haidee-Jo for suggesting this app!