Whenever I feel that my creativity is going stale, I try to challenge myself with a more difficult type of painting. My favorite challenges are either diptychs or fantasy paintings which combine scenes from totally different locales into one painting.
The most difficult fantasy panorama I have painted combined several mountains of the Cascades and also the coast hills, beaches and ocean waves. I was inspired to do it because the radio station I listen to as I paint kept mentioning all their stations from the “Cascades to the coast”. After hearing that phrase repeated several times a day for a couple of years I decided to try to paint it. At times, it seemed more of a challenge than I anticipated, but I did get it finished and it sold to a couple who had lived in Oregon and wanted something to remind them of all its beauty.
COMBINING REALISTIC SCENES
I do try to stay within a reasonable reality when I combine my scenery, but I may change the seasons to get the maximum color effect. I really love colorful autumn leaves and the graceful branches of the vine maple trees, so paint them into many of my landscapes. Fortunately, they grow in many areas of Oregon, so if they aren’t in some of the scenery I paint, they could be.
CREATING FANTASY GARDENS
Another favorite challenge for me is to combine flowers from several seasons into one garden painting. Artists many years ago combined these “unseasonal” flowers into still-lifes, but today it is possible for florists to get flowers from all over the world any time of the year so to make a true fantasy, I have to show them growing.
Here are two of my fantasy paintings – an acrylic – “Fantasy Panorama – Oregon Coast” and a watercolor – “Garden Fantasy”.
