Aside from my usual bag of tricks, a new feature that I’m happy about in this piece is the way I handled the trees. I used a stained-glass approach to balance out the fade of dark to light (from left to right). The darkest point is the apex, where the dog’s tail meets with the distant woods, each headed in their opposed directions. As the woods reveal themselves towards the right side of the piece, they gradually become lighter in shade. Of course this two-dimensional approach to defining depth does not exist naturally in the wild, but optically it achieves my intentions of establishing depth and distance.
This detail shows again how the texture of the board enhanced the piece in the bottom right area. The natural wood grains that show through the darkened area create an organic realism that you just can’t create on your own. Also, note the flow of white gesso across the board, paralleling the angle of the hillside. In a black and white, 2D environment every extra bit counts towards creating a believable scene. That too is what project35 is all about. Even though I primed these boards and cut them over a year ago, I’ve utilized the naturally occurring textures of the gesso treatment to my advantage.
