39.5 cm x 48.5 cm, oil paints on board.
Date produced: August 2014 - December 2016.
The winery being referred to here is the Magill Penfolds Winery, which is located in the Adelaide foothills next to my suburb, Wattle Park. When I saw this scene for real while out on a walk, I was impressed with the warm glow of sunlight, and the colours in the sunlit trunk of the small tree. The small stands of tall dark pine trees provided interesting notes of contrasting sunlit colour and tone.
This painting started with a pastel of the scene produced on-site, directly from the scene over several sessions at the same time of the day, and under similar weather conditions. I also photographed the scene at the same time. I used the on-site pastel to help adjust the colours and tones in the photograph to better match the colours and tones of the pastel. I then started producing the painting based on the adjusted photograph, using the pastel to check with the resulting colour information. I painted the scene a little like I was using pastels. The range of colours mixed from paint is better than the range of colours that comes from pastels, but it does take longer to mix so many colours. After getting the painting to an advanced stage, I waited until the same time of the year (18th August) in 2015 (exactly one year later, when the sun will be in a very similar position), and took the painting to the scene at the correct time of day to check the colours. Quite a few adjustments were made. More work was done on the painting based on those adjustments. Another check was made in August 2016.
I did have difficulty in getting the reproduction here to have the same colours as the original. The tree trunk has quite a few different cadmium yellow, orange and red tones which haven't been captured with the same vibrancy and clarity as the painting - similarly, in the real painting, there is more clarity with the trees in the distance behind the orange trunk. |
