how it all started…
My love affair with painting Landscapes began like a “chance encounter”.
When I was a Sophomore Architecture student, our professor in Rendering class asked us to choose a picture of a building from a magazine and render it in watercolor. The exercise was to learn how to draw a facade of a building. I chose a a picture wherein the building and the trees around it are silhouetted against the bloody-red sunset sky, ( I didn’t know why, I just liked the picture ). I painted the sky perfectly, but the supposed-to-be focal point was nothing but profile in pitch-black.
So when I gave my finished work to my then terror teacher, he looked at me like I was playing a joke on him. But his laugh and anger died in his throat when he saw the look on my face…I was proud of my work. I looked energized and glowing, (well, that’s exactly how I felt at that time) like I just finished running.
Of course he gave me a failing grade.
After the class, he asked me if I wanted to change my major to Fine Arts. I said no, Im happy here. So he tried for several months to teach me how to make the building the main subject of my works, but I always ended up detailing the trees around it & focusing more on the mood of the painting . Similar to the painting above.
I barely passed the subject but I found something about myself.
Looking back, I should have followed his advice and studied Painting.
Not surprisingly also, one of my favorite subjects in college was Landscape Design.
(The painting on the this page is from one of my exercises from the book: “30-minute Landscapes” by Paul Talbot-Greaves)