Dallas Plein Air Painting Workshop with Niki Gulley
Day 2 – Afternoon Location: Sunset Bay, White Rock Lake
Dallas Plein Air Painting Workshop with Niki Gulley
Day 2 – Afternoon Location: Sunset Bay, White Rock Lake
Dallas Plein Air Painting Workshop with Niki Gulley
Day 2 – Morning Location: White Rock Lake
Just sold! I absolutely love poppies and seeing them growing in mass! In this painting I wanted to show them in a different way than we’re used to seeing poppies so I chose a low angle to show off the beauty of their simplified forms and the strength of such a delicate flower, while capturing the azure blue sky behind them.
White Rock Lake sparkles in the evening sunset encompassed by the dark silhouette of the downtown Dallas skyline and the cresting bridge that carries cyclists around the lake’s bike trail. Forefront dense shrubs, pampas grasses and trees frame the image and hold it in a mirror reflection of the bridge – an intriguing and complex composition that is designed to move you, the viewer, into the painting and carry your eye around this picturesque view of Dallas’s cherished White Rock Lake. Rich with texture, thick palette knife strokes build lights and shadows; selecting saturated colors to suggest hope and optimism about upcoming days and using mysterious darks to define the lush foliage and offset the lowering sun.
To see this painting of downtown Dallas and more of Niki Gulley’s textured palette knife oil paintings in person, please stop by her booth at the Cottonwood Art Festival this weekend.
Impressions II, White Rock Lake – 5″ x 7″ pastel
Today I revisited the same location at White Rock Lake as last week, but I wanted to paint it completely different this time. I love vibrant color and playing with contrasts in my subject, so today I really had fun. Hope you do, too!