A L L I E Z E Y E R
FINE ART
Greetings from the Studio!
I’m knee deep in preparing for the Sacred Spaces: Visions of the West from the Prosaic to the Sublime show this May! It’s an incredibly exciting journey, though a bit daunting!
Creating each piece feels like assembling a 1,000-piece puzzle. Because many of my reference photos were taken in different years or seasons, I rely heavily on color charts and plein air studies. So, how do I begin? Here’s a glimpse into my process:
The Approach:
A Spark: It starts with on-site observations!
Photography: I take many reference photos (high and low-exposure, focused and blurred) so I can “see” things differently. In this particular case, I wanted to see into the shadow of the shed—I overexposed the photo to reveal the nuances that cameras usually turn pitch-black.
Low Exposure
High Exposure
Digital Editing: This is the fun part! I love digitally composing. With this reference photo, I found adding more light to the foreground, adjusting the “sweep” of grasses, along with small shifts of planks and tree foliage helped give more variety to the scene and keep the viewer’s eye moving within the frame of the painting. Notice anything else?
Color & Temperature: Since my reference photo was overexposed, I experimented with thumbnail sketches to find the right summer sky. I gravitated to a color that encompassed both Cerulean Blue and Bice, which reminded me of a great quote by Andrew Loomis:
“In nature, colors are made up of variety all through, which means warm and cool variations, or colors broken or blended together. The sky is not one blue, the ground not one green or brown or grey…. If you can put three reds together, they are more beautiful than one red…”
- Andrew Loomis
Mixing many varieties of paint.
Many small decisions inform what we see as a completed piece. Painting can be rigorous at times especially when it encompasses inspiration, study, editing, practice and problem solving—all for the end goal of making the painting look effortless!
I look forward to furthering this deep dive and sharing the results with you at the Museum Show in May!
Allie