A Landscape “The Forest of Arden” Journal Painting

Landscape painting "The Forest of Arden" by painter Albert Pinkham Ryder

The journal I am prepping to use next is an old school book. An art class book in fact. As you might expect it is filled with color photos of famous paintings. One in particular caught my eye, “The Forest of Arden” by Albert Pinkham Ryder, painted in 1888.

Here is a photo I found and a link to the site where they sell oil painting reproductions(click the picture to see the site).

Several things about this painting attracted me to it. The colors, the meandering stream, and the tree in the foreground. Almost surreal in an otherwise realist type of painting. Of note, this might be a realistic tree of a variety I have never seen. To these eyes, it seems surreal.

Last night, after my turkey induced nap, I was looking around for inspiration for my daily journal page and I spotted this picture. Now I am an abstract painter who dabbles in portraits. I am not a landscape painter (unless it is strictly abstract).

So I have no true explanation for my sudden desire to paint this painting. Explanation or not, I proceeded to paint it.

I don’t use oil paints. I would have no idea how to use them. I have a sense though that they blend better and remain open for far longer than acrylics. I just can’t get comfortable with the idea of using the chemicals that they require. And I don’t think I want to ‘smell’ those chemicals all the time. So I knew reproducing (in my own way of course) this painting would be quite the challenge.

Another challenge was the color palette. I would never manage a muted palette such as this one. Call me young or impertinent but these colors, however beautiful, just feel out of date to me. Plus getting my acrylics to reproduce this muted palette seemed far too daunting. I was afraid if I spent too much time worrying about that I would not attempt the painting.

I just gathered together the colors I thought would be pleasing to me and somewhat represent this painting in a nice way.

I used an entire page spread for my painting so it is a good deal wider, in fact it is a landscape vs. portrait view. And I did not go so far as to attempt the figures in the lower left. I really wanted to do the landscape itself instead.

Here is my completed page:

© 2009 Christy Sobolewski (Gulfsprite.com)

I have to say my biggest challenge was the boulders in the foreground. We don’t exactly have boulders here in South Florida.

They were like painting an alien, strictly based on my imagination and the bit of detail I could see in the book page. It was a challenge and although they are inferior to what was in the original painting I am very proud of them. This is based mainly on the fact that I repainted them twice. The first go they looked more like a gray shore line than boulders. The second go they were just too oddly shaped to look like anything other than a gray blob on my painting.

© 2009 Christy Sobolewski (Gulfsprite.com)

This little tree is my favorite part of the painting. I love the lighting I achieve and the tree trunks are just so, well, cute. Only an artist would say these things. A slightly sentimental dorky artist.

© 2009 Christy Sobolewski (Gulfsprite.com)

I considered reworking the top of the closest tree but in the end decided to leave it as it was. It is the one part of the painting that I felt should look the least realistic. Had I continued to work on the leaves I think I would have ruined that eventually. I love the trunk of this tree too. Getting those lines in there, and trying to make them blend without loosing the crisp look to them was not easy. This took about 4 tries before I was satisfied with my result.

Overall I have to say I really enjoyed this little painting. But don’t expect I am going to become a landscape artist. No matter how much fun or how rewarding this was too paint, it is nothing at all like the feeling I get as I work on an abstract piece. They are worlds apart for me.