Max on a swing

First to everyone, sorry, had a wonderful title for this piece but i didnt write it down and now it has left me and i just cant remember it so we just have to live with this for now.

I have really struggled the past few days finding inspiration for my new piece, my wonderful friends at ScribbleTalk assured me that they all have the same thing from time to time and it will pass, and so it has (i think).

So here is a photo that i took a while ago that i have always loved of max. While it's a great photo there has been something about the photo that i always felt was missing, i think it is to do with the lighting on max as well as the trees in the background and just the romantisism of it all that i felt was lacking. So my goal with this one is to create and capture the "feeling" of that moment rather than just reproducing the photo as such.

So here it is so far here are a few points / goals i am remembering with this one:

- I am taking particular care with colours .. i really want the foreground tree to pop and it be very light in the back (a hard lesson with light colours for me).

- I choose this reference as i wanted to do something with which allows me to be a bit creative with the background and make my own mark on it, (obviously i wont be drawing each leaf and tree the same) its something i have enjoyed with my watercolour of late and its something i have observed i have resisited with my coloured pencils (i dont know why) so this one i am forced to go through that thought process with this subject.

- I am also keeping in mind to keep it really light touch and light colours where applicable. Its something i really really struggle with and is where i have failed in my recent pieces as i just get too heavy handed and my values get waaay too dark.

- Colour is also a major factor with this one, as you can see i have done a few swatches down the bottom .. i am using a kind of complementary grisaille on the dark tree and darker areas. i do struggle with it on the lighter colours (i just cant seem to do it on all of the whole picture) at one time

- process. process. process. the main thing with cp is that its a process of layers, i tend to get bored and try to hurry the process, its something i am pulling myself back on constantly. so i am making sure i do the background first and working dark to light also concentrating on mixing the colours properly eg. rather than using a dark umber colour i will be using blues and yellows and greens and red to build up my colour and get a much richer colour palette

So all in all theres a few goals with this one :) hopefully i can stick with it this time!

Its 11"X14" or 27.9cm X 35.5cm and i am back to the stonehenge paper on this one.