“Carpenter Barn” a commissioned barn painting
What a challenge! I was recently commissioned to paint a memory. The photograph below was the best one available to create a barn painting for a local client. It’s a photo of a friend’s barn on the road where the couple grew up together, somewhere in the middle of the state. Growing up, they played there, had moonlight rides in the back of a pick-up truck stargazing, and had many wonderful memories of times spent together with friends.
Try as we might, there were no better photos to use as reference, and certain things had changed over the course of the years between then and now. We worked together with the former owner of the barn, who was very helpful in jogging some memories of times gone by to create a painting of a childhood memory. Actually going to the place and taking better photos wasn’t feasible, it’s just as snow covered now, and some hours drive away. Newer, crisper photographs still wouldn’t replace the missing parts of the barn- different doors, silo, fencing and gate, etc.
After a bit of on-line research and emailing back and forth with different looking missing items to jog memories, I cobbled together a sketch for the composition for approval:
It’s a rough sketch that I did on my Galaxy Note, so that was fun. I was able to e-mail it to my client directly for approval. From there, I just transferred the sketch to a 22 x 28 canvas to begin the painting.
Once it was sketched out onto the canvas, I over-painted the entire canvas in a warm geige shade to delineate the values of the composition before painting. I dislike painting on white canvas and having the white break through any of the colors. My client got frequent photo updates of the work’s progress so that any adjustments could be made if any memories surfaced. And they did!
I decided I wanted to have a partially stormy looking sky for this work, with the sun coming from the left side of the canvas to light the background trees and clouds. The barn faces north, so the front seldom gets full sunlight, just a glancing light. As I was working on the sky, (I always work on the farthest part of the painting first, foreground last) adjustments were made to the height of the silo and far right corner of the milking shed to better fit with memories.
With the sky mostly completed, I began adding some color to the trees and barn itself while waiting for additional information to come in and approval on the adjusted silo height.
Continuing to move forward, the background trees are nearly finished with the addition of some fall choke cherries at the feet of the cottonwoods. The fallow fields are still green, but have some dried weeds in them and the field at left is plowed and ready for spring. Behind the barn is a pen for the cows, mostly trampled earth. The fence and gate will be added later.
More details are added in, layers of colors and brushstrokes. I continue to move forward in the painting, building upon previous work and making adjustments to fit new memories as they arise.
We had many back and forth e-mail discussions of items to include in the painting and where. After some discussion, I placed an old tractor out in the field for interest and began some foreground trees and shrubs. The slope down to the roadside ditch is shaggy with overgrown grasses and weeds. Now there’s a fence and gate out behind the barn, plus a big galvanized tank by the fence.
I continued adding details, standing back to concentrate, making adjustments to highlights and shadows until I was satisfied with the completed painting. Above is the painting almost complete- it is at the tweaking stage where I will just look at it and think about what it ‘needs’. This one ‘needed’ some fall purple asters to bring the color of the sky down into the foreground. If you look carefully, there are three Barn Swallows flying around hunting insects in the field.
I’m sure this painting isn’t exactly the same as the old one. Memory is like that, our minds remember some things better than others and it is a very difficult thing to try to see into the mind of someone else to interpret what is there. I can only hope I did my job well enough.
