Essentials Cafe

This was taken in a firends garden. He created this structure behind the large Koi Pond he had built. The sky was reaaly just a white patch behind the scene so first I erased the sky in photoshop using the background eraser. Then I chose one of my photos of skies and lay it under the original picture to give it more interest.

I let auto paint (oil painting on random strokes) loose until it looked a real mess, at which point I stopped it.

I used this as an underpainting and then worked on it with various sizes of the smeary round and the real round bristle brushes. Once I was satisfied I took the loaded pallet knife to highlight some of the edges of the fence and the rocks in the foreground

squirrel this is extremely pleasant. this image has a nice, country feel to it and you did a wonderful job rendering it. thanks for sharing.

I love this image Squirrel and would love to see it printed up and on the wall.  It has a lovely country atmosphere and the sky compliments it well.

There is something that bothers me a bit and I hope you don't mind me mentioning it.

On the RH side where the first fence post is...just to the left of that there is some green on the railing and it seems as if the ground and the fence and greenery have all submerged together.  Perhaps this is how it is mean't to be I'm not sure.  but perhaps a little more work in this area would benefit a cleaner finish in keeping with the rest of the painting. 

Anyway I love this one and is now one of my favorites of yours.  I do hope that you put it in your gallery.

This has been framed and given to the friend for his 60th birthday.

The area you talk about dianne is an area where a lot is happening.

This scene is like a model of the countryside. He built this behind a waterfall leading into a large kio carp pond. The fence only stand about 18 inches high, there is lots of moss and lichens on the rocks and fencing and the leaves of the trees push through the fencing. Although it is lost in the deliberate loss of photographic detail, there is also a large bonsai tree (well large for a bonsai so it is still small ) stood there too.. I deliberately blurred out the bosai to makle it look more natural but left some of the moss and the leaves pushing through the fence.

In the large photograph it does look less merged and more mossy.

Thanks Squirrel for your explanation.  It would have been a lovely gift.

I appreciate that when we put things up here on the forum they are in fact very small and often don't do the subject justice.  What you have said makes sense.  This is certainly one of my favorites that you have done.