White Pine Among the Boulders

"White Pine Among the Boulders" (oil on birch panel 8x8 in.)

22 June 2018 found me sitting on a mossy boulder, painting the base of an imposing White Pine in the Spednic Natural Protected Area, east of McAdam, New Brunswick. This is hilly forested terrain, full of gullies and boulder fields. The others have driven on up the road, in search of earthworms, leaving me here to clamber over moss-blanketed boulders until I decide on a subject to paint. I took many photos of Yellow Birches perched on massive fern-fringed rocks, clasping them snakelike with gleaming naked roots, but couldn’t decide which would be best for a painting. 

Finally I’d wandered up over the hill and looked down to a sunlit valley of ferns and bushes. There at its edge rose up before me the tremendous trunk (about 80 cm diameter) of a lone White Pine, a mighty column sculpted in bas relief by grooved and plated bark, and towering its fine-needled crown up against the sky. I considered looking up to paint, but decided to commune with the base of this giant at my own level, where it emerges from the rusty litter of needles that covers rocks heaved by its roots.

Rocks, even moss-covered, don’t give much purchase for the point of my umbrella pole, so I wedged it into a crevice and leaned the pole against my shoulder to shade my back from the hot sun. The light breeze wafted smoke from my insect coil burners which I’d hung from the twigs of the young Fir behind me. The mosquitoes from the sunny valley were beginning to find me, and I’d not have lasted long without the smoke! 

Thus constrained, I perched on my low moss-covered boulder to begin an excruciatingly daunting painting. Since I’d begun to set up, the sun had shifted its position on the trunk, and promised to keep shifting, also shifting tree shadows across the leaf litter and over the flanks of boulders in the background - not to mention the confusion of high-contrast stripy trunks in the distance! 

I considered just taking photos and painting from them back at the BiotaNB lab - but I was already all set up, and my companions would not be back for a couple of hours - so I took courage, applying my underpainting, laying in the base colours for the shapes of trunk and rock, and then boldly stroking in the shadows and streaks of sunshine, as they were when I’d got to that stage. I paused to take photos and a sip of water, then coloured the shadows where they lay over Pine needles or moss - then coloured the sunlight, where it lay over Pine needles or moss… and suddenly the whole scene began to make sense in the painting. Then I bravely striped in the trunks of Spruces, Firs and Birches, each in sun or shadow, made a few patches of blue sky near the top…. and then I heard voices coming down the hill - their earlier calls had been muffled completely by the blanketed boulders.

I was pleased with how complete the painting looked as I set it up in the lab to apply finishing touches of bark, needle, and twig detail. A successful sketch en plein air!

For more information, or to purchase a print, please contact Aleta