Boot Scootin' Wannabes

I have been experiencing some health problems that have kept me from being able to go out plein air painting. This has put me into a state of "withdrawal" from being out in Mother Nature with my painting friends painting. In the meantime I have been taking a class with a friend and very talented artist on finding your visual voice. Liz encouraged the class to use the class to engage in painting a series. I had been wanting to paint a pair of cowboy oot mules I own and decided to initate a "shoe" series.

A lot of artists experience problems plein air painting in narrowing down a scene and developing a strong composition. I have not found that to be a problem. However....as I began to set up a still life with my shoes I found myself definitely struggling to develop an interesting and strong composition. After many changes and adjustments I finally settled on a setup using the shoes, a pair of jeans and a red suede jacket.

It was great fun painting this setup. I really enjoyed doing the jeans and the suede jacket. I also really enjoyed being very impressionistic on the shoes themselves. I was happy with the results....but as always I wanted to spend some time looking at the piece and deciding if any changes were needed. I also took the piece to class to get some feedback from my fellow classmates.

As a result of my own contemplation and chewing on feedback from classmates, I decided that the blue jeans needed some darkening to push them back so the shoes dominate. That helped a lot......but further review brought me to the decision to crop the top of the piece about an inch.

I am very happy with the final result. Now on to the next shoe setup!!