Overview:
Title: The Four Seasons Size: Medium: Acrylic Paint Date of Completion: December 2023 Exhibition Text: The Four Seasons is an acrylic painting inspired by clyde aspevig that depicts my favorite things about each of the four seasons. Whether it is the flowers, the sunsets and sand, the falling leaves, or the snow, I always find something to enjoy outside. Each of these aspacts are personal to me and are things I enjoying seeing or doing with my family. Simplistic forms are created with the small details to help capture my true favorites of each season. |
Inspiration: clyde aspevig
My inspiration for these paintings was Clyde Aspevig. His body of work mostly consists of landscapes, which I was very much insired by. My piece was very environmentally oriented so his pieces were very inspirational to me. The first this i was inspired by was the mountain scenery in the first picture. This piece was very inspiring for the winter side of my painting. I was not using this piece as a visual inspiration for my piece but mostly for a conceptual idea. At first I had a harder time coming up with an idea for the winter side, but seeing Aspevig's painting helped me to come up with ny idea. I really loved the color scheme of this painting because it meshed well together while also standing out. I was also inspired by Aspevig's second piece here. For this one I was inspired by the gradient blending in the sky. I thought this would work well in the summer part of my painting. Iloved how well the background helped to compliment the rest of the scenery and didn't overpower it. I think that is something I will have to make sure that I have in my piece. I need to find the perfect balance between the background and the actual scenery that is symbolic.
Planning
I knew for sure for this piece that I was going to work with the four canvases to do depoctions of the four seasons. So to start my planning process I organized some asoects that could be included in each of the four seasons. Not all of these ideas are necesarily going to be included but it gave me a general idea. Those ideas are seen here:
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Once I knew which aspects I could possibly include in each of my four paintings, it was time to actually plan out each of my ideas. The first season I work on was Spring. I decided that for spring i was going to have one large tree off to the left side that is going to be covered in loght ponk flower with some hints of whote flowers. I wanted to for sure include this because I love how in spring time the trees begin to bud and you can see all the beautiful little flowers on it. This was the main focus of the piece so I wanted the rest of it to be simplistic in form. I planned out the cutoff between the sky and river, and then the river and grass. On the grass, I plan to use the same shade of light pink to make flower petals. Because when the trees bud, the petals then fall to the ground. The next one to work on was sunmmer. For this one, I knew I obviously had to include the beach with the beautiful water and sand. I wanted to paint out a typical beach with a volleyball court becahse of me playing volleyball for two years in school. Then I want to paint a relacing scene with the beach towel and umbrella. These are typical activities people like to participate in in the summer.
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Up next, I did the planning sketch for fall, which is my favorite season. My favorite thing about fall is seeing all the leaves changing colors and seeing them fall gracefully from the tree. So this is what I want to depict. I remember one day I was driving with my family and we saw two trees kind of arching over the road so that is my inspiration. I drew out a large tree on each side, both of them bare. On the grassy areas is where all of the fallen leaves are. I want the leaves to be brown, orange, green, yellow, and bright red. That is what I like to see in the real world. Lastly, i did the scketch for winter. This js where the knspiration piece came in. I wanted to include the snow covered mountains in the background along with some snow covered pine trees, because they remind me of christmas. And since I am trying to depict snow on a white canvas, I think i will have to add a hind of gray into the white, to separate it from the white of the board.
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Process
The first step was to plan out the spring setting on my little canvas board lightly. I did this using my pencil. It took a little trial and error because I could not get the shape of the tree to my liking. Once I had the shape of the tree to be how I liked it, I had to put the cutoffs on there. At first i tried to doing straight lines but it seemed too forced. Then I tried doing survy libes but it was too messy. So I had to find that right balance between the staight and the curvy lines. I didn't add the flower buds or petals in my initial sketch here because I felt they would have gotten lost oknce I stated painting the tree and the sky. I figured I could add this part later on.
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The next step was to begin painting. I started by mixing together a brown shade for the tree. I applied this brown shade using a medium sized flat brush for the trunk and a small flat brush for the branches. Once I had the based coat of the brown shade complete, i let it dray and began to work on the gras. For the grass I mixed together a dark green shade and applied that using a large flat brush. I then went back in for a second coat on the brown for the tree using the same two brushes as the last time. After that was done, I mixed together two different shades of blue, une for the sky and one for the river. I ised a medium sized flat brush to apply the light blue shade to the sky area. I had to try to be careful to not get the blue on the branches. There were a few places where that happened so i just went over the branches with brown again. After I had the sky done, I went back over the tree a third time and then went over the grassy green again so that it was a nice even coat.
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Now came time to paint the river. I used the darker blue shade for this part of the painting. I used smaller flat brush to apply this shade onto the board. While it was drying, i added some streaks of the leftover light blue to show the flow of the water. Lastly came my favorite part, adding the pink flowers. I mixed together a beatiful shade of pink for the flowers and set aside some white paint for the white flowers. I took a small round brush and dipped it in the pink shade. I then repeatedly tapped the brush on the board im the spots I wanted to add flowers. Once that was dokne, I repeated that process with the white paint to create the white flowers. I then repeated thjs process for the flowers that are on the ground as well as the ones in the river.
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The next section I chose to work on was the winter section. I began by planning out where each aspect of the painting would go. The first part I had sketched out was the two pine tries on either side of the canvas. The next thing was the mountains in the back. Lastly I thought it would be cute to add a little fence for an extra little detail.
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I started this painting out by working on the sky. I had used some of the left over blue shade from the spring painting for the sky. I used a medium sides flat brush to help me get the precise lines around the mountains. Then I used a medium sized flat brush to fill it in. Once the sky was done, I decised that the next think that needed to be donr was the trees, so I used my previous brown shade for the tree trunk and the green shade for the branches. For the branches I used a round brush and tried to have the perfect mix of clean lines and messy lines. Not all trees are perfect, and I wanted to capture that.
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After the trees were done, i mixed together a shade of light gray to add to the mpuntains. I had to use a smaller detail brush and a steady hand to get the detailing right around the trees. I filled in the whole mountains with my two differing shades of gray. Once those were done, i sed the same light gray shade and added more white to it to make an even lighter gray. I used my large fan brush to add the gray to the white parts on the bottom of the canvas. The fan brush helped to add the implied texture of snow. After everythkmg was dry, I used a round brush and my white paint to add the snow details to the mountains and the trees. I wanted to be able to see the original color behind the snow to make it more realistic.
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Now it came time to work on the fall part of the painting which is what i was most excited for. For this started by mapping out where each part of the painting would go and then I began to paint. I mixed together my brown shade again and used my favorite medium flat brush to fill in the shapes I made with my pencil. I did two coats of brown for this to get an even coat. Then i used a light shade of blue to fill in the sky. This was very hard to do with how small the spaces between the branchs were. Lastly for this step I mixed together a yellow green shade for the grass. Grass in fall tends to start turning a little more yellow so I wanted to incorporate that slightly.
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Once I had everything done it was time to paint my favorite aspect of fall, the multicoored leaves. I mixed together a bright orange shade, a brown shade, and grabbed my red, tellow, and green. I used the same method that I had used for the pink flowers for the spring. I used a small round brush and did dots of each color along the grass. I tried to make it look as realistic as I possibly could, without it being too overpowering. I had to let some layers dry before adding more so that the colors didn't smudge together. I wanted each color to stand out.
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The theme for the summer part of this painting was a nice beach scene at sun down. To achieve this I needed to have a nice sunset. So I mixed together a bright pink, a bright orange, and blue. I layed down a stipe of the orange at the bottom of the horizon. On top of that I added a layer of the pjnk and then a layer of the blue. I blended the layers together, adding more of a certain color when I needed to. Once that was done, I used what I had left over from my blue and added that to the part where the water was. Lastly I used my leftover orange and brown to make the sand color. I added some white to it so it was not as dark. I added two layers if the sand color.
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The fiknal step was to work on the smaller details like the umbrella, blanket, and volleyball court. I used my leftover pink paint to work on the blanket and added some purple to it for the umbrella. Once that was dkne I used a small detail brush and some gray paint to make the volleyball court. Once I had that done I used any leftover paint I had to make touch ups kon any of the four boards in parts that needed fixing. Once the touchups were complete the entire painting was done.
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Experimentation
For experimentation, the main thing I did was with my colors. I had mixed together my colors on a paper plate so every color that I had attempted to make is on there. I had to make multiple shades of blue to differentiate between the water and the sky. I had multiple shads of green for the different paintings. another this was with the brushes. I had to keep switching brush sizes throughout the making of this project because some were too large for the different areas. I didn't test out the brushes beforehand like I normally do because I was already familiart with which brushes would work for certain parts. So I didn't feel the need to practice with them this time around to save time.
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Critique
In relation to the visual aspect of my piece compared to the inspiration there are not many similarities. There is the similarity of the having the snowy mountain and the ombre sky but the overall asthetical appearance is not very similar. My piece has more simplistic forms whereas the pieces done by my inspiration has more complex form and that is what I found very compelling about them. I also used more vivid, bright colors unlike the colors that were used in the inspiration pieces. Those are more toned down. The similarities come into play when we talk about the conceptual ideas. When I was looking into Aspevig's body of work I saw a lot of beautifully painted landscapes from Wyoming and Montana. My favorite thing to paint or draw are landscape pieces so it was cool to see how he is able to portray these landscapes. Paint can sometimes be difficult to work with so to see how he was able to do it in these two pieces was very inspiring to me.
Reflection
This piece was very fun to make. I was able to inclulde my favorite aspect of each of the four seasons. For spring I love driving around and seeing the trees bud with beautiful flowers. My favorite ones are the pink ones so that is why I included that. I love going to parks and seeing the flower buds all over the grass and falling into the rivers. For summer I love going to beaches, whether it is the ones here in Milwaukee or when I go to Florida. Volleyball was a big part of my life for two years so that is why I wanted to include that. My favorite thing about summertime is being outside and watching the sunset. For fall, I love seeing the multicolored leaves falling from the trees. This is a very unpopular opinion but I love to rake all the leaves. As I had stated earlier, I remember one time I saw two large trees arching over the toad with the beautiful leaves falling. I will never forget that. Lastly, for winter, I love snow and I love to see things like trees covered in snow. So all four of these paintings are extremely personal to me and the things I love to see. The painting was kind of difficult to do because of the layering and the small spaces that I had to fill in. It took a lot of time to get them done because I repeatedly had to wait for each layer to dry. If I were to do it again, I think I would life to add more symbolism in the summer part of this painting. But otherwise I am extrememly happy with how these turned out.
ACT Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
- I am able to identify a cause and effect relationship because of the overall concept of my piece and how it was inspired by the works of my inspiration.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- The overall approach the author has is to portray nature in its truest form.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- I made the generalization that all the artists that I looked at that did landscape art are all fascinated by nature like I am.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- The central theme around my research is nature.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
-I made the inference that the most common art theme is nature and is beauty.
- I am able to identify a cause and effect relationship because of the overall concept of my piece and how it was inspired by the works of my inspiration.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- The overall approach the author has is to portray nature in its truest form.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- I made the generalization that all the artists that I looked at that did landscape art are all fascinated by nature like I am.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- The central theme around my research is nature.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
-I made the inference that the most common art theme is nature and is beauty.
MLA Citations
“Clyde Aspevig’s Artwork in Collections.” Aspevig, www.clydeaspevig.com/artwork-in-collections.html. Accessed 4 Dec. 2023.