Diana Ozolins

Finally started the Bridge at Cass Park – I quietly think of it as Monet in Cass Park. Of course, this required cleaning. First the stove needed to be scrubbed. When that was shining, and perfect, it was clear that there was no room for painting in the studio. Things needed to be put in order again. Then the canvas could be marked off into a grid, the painting covered with saran wrap and gridded, and I could begin to lay out the painting. I covered the canvas with the “first draft”, and scraped gently over everything I put on the canvas. That leaves a good, smooth surface for making the inevitable corrections, perspective, scale, light, and especially important in this painting because of the tricky part about painting a bridge that looks like a bridge

“Yvonne painting at Bill and Jack’s” has been bothering me since I first created it. It has had many revisions, fits and starts. Today it tells me that changing the angle of the table will create a more believable space. What a remarkable change. I’ve known for quite some time that I needed to clean up some smudges on the lampshade and the hat. Taking care of that brightened it considerably, and called for further changes. The table cloth was too bright, needed some receding color. The new sense of rightness of space popped it into a greater sense of reality and called out for the bowl and lemons to be adjusted. Then highlights on the body, brightening the shirt, and fixing the awkward hand. In a nutshell, “I’ll just…“ turned into a complete overhaul. I think it is spectacular now. I am very pleased with it and my day of painting.
After lunch I got to some revisions on the huge firs in the Tualatin landscape. That has been bothering me for a year. Again, it took a long time to think about what needed to be done. First, changing the bright yellow in the sky to a more believable blue, then the leaves on the trees needed to be compensated to punch up the brightness with the yellow gone. The path next needed to be lightened, made more complex, and graded from close to far. In the process, the amount and quality of light pouring across it needed to be adjusted. Once again, it was a rolling cascade of changes – one thing called out for another as the relationships between areas shifted. Was much pleased with it afterwards.

A successful day of painting does not break a large enough hole in the ice to keep it from closing up again the next day. Same fear of the painting. Not enough time to muck about and fail and still have time to continue and succeed. Needed another muck-about-painting, so I chose John Paul in the water. It was fun to unify and simplify the rocks, create a better composition. This is another painting that has been sitting for years, but I yearn to complete it. The vulnerability of this little boy in the water, all alone, in front of the huge rocks that form a menacing cavern. Would be nice to have all of that psychological drama in addition to the spectacular color of warm, hot skin on a bright day reflecting in the water, and contrasting with the cool blues and grays. No reference photo! What a disadvantage.