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This is the time of year when it’s not easy to get a lovely landscape painting. Spring doesn’t officially begin for a couple weeks. There’s no snow on the ground, the trees are bare, the grass is duller, and most of the plant life is dead. Artists love color and it can be a challenge to find it.

We have a Hawthorne tree in our back yard that we love. I’ve painted it a few times in the summer. One of my favorite things about it is its many trunks that sprout from the ground and wind upward. Last Saturday was a cold, sunny day and I snapped a few photos of birds eating out of the feeders we have hanging from it. I loved the shadows that were made the trunks onto our lawn. After viewing the photos on my computer screen, I was inspired to do a painting from it. 

I took one of the photos and cropped it into a square composition, then brought that photo to my basement studio to view on a laptop I keep near my easel. I then drew my composition onto a 16” x 16” canvas that I already wired for hanging and added a warm tone all over. I included only one of our feeders to make it a focal point and to simplify the composition, and only one bird. Since the cardinal is one of our favorite birds due to its bright color and lovely song, I inserted one sitting on the feeder.

The painting itself took about 4 or 5 hours to do, spread over a couple days. The first day was spent blocking the large shapes in and then modifying them into smaller shapes. It was close to being finished at this point, but it still needed something I couldn’t put my finger on. Usually, a little time away to refresh my eyes does the trick, and this was no exception.

The next day, I only had to modify a few shapes and then spend a little time with the details. I hadn’t added the fence the first day and wasn’t sure if I was going to include it. The next day, I thought I’d give it a try thinking it could be a good design element to lead the eye around the painting and unify the composition. If it didn’t work I could just scrape it off and fix the paint. Luckily, it worked for me. The area I probably spent the most time on was the feeder and the cardinal itself. Since it was the focal point, I wanted it to look right and I used my smallest knife to get the shape on the bird the way I wanted it.

So how does a painter know when a painting is finished? It’s a problem most painters have. A lot of us are enjoying the experience so much, we don’t want it to end, but at the same time, we don’t want to overwork and possibly ruin the freshness of what we’ve painted. Luckily, I do have a method that’s been very important in successful in determining when to stop — my dear wife of almost 25 years, Tammie. She has been instrumental in telling me honestly what parts of my painting works and what needs changing or exploring further. She gave the thumbs up to the state the painting currently is, so I’ll gladly defer to her wisdom.

Here’s my finished painting now hanging in our front room to dry. This is a 16” x 16” oil on canvas painted solely with painting knives.