High and Low rangesImaginary Forest Exemplars: Mid range

In this open spacious forest the mark making is somewhat underpainted. There is an attempt at inhabiting the forest slightly. The sense of tree form is there in the vertical trunks and the variety of attempts to render different kinds of foliage. There is use of fingers, rotating sponges and brush dabbing. The painting is consistent in that it is airy and spacious and somewhat tentative. What seems to be missing is a rich commitment to pigment and perhaps the compositional arrangement of things other than the flanking trees in the central foreground.
Only one recipe has been used for green in this painting, and it is used all over. The snarly and tufty topped tree forms are interesting. What is missing is a sense of density and forest. This is a careful painting of a couple of trees and a foreground river that seems to disappear on us. The area of painting that might have succeeded in giving the sense of forest is yet to come and there is not any real indication from the student as to how that would be resolved. The colour range used so far is quite limited.
Here are three very similar trunks with some sense of vines. There are some stereotype birds and a string of sky. There is a series of intervals between each trunk which vary the effect of shape and size and this adds to a sense of forest depth rather than to a sense of regimentation. So compositionally this painting is well worked out. The background has been painted by filling in between the trunks with pale colour (it is not unpainted paper) so the entire surface has been painted. What is missing is a sense of anything beyond the trunks, so there isn't really a believable sense of forest and recession of space. It is largely through the white bird forms across the front of the trees that any sense of space is achieved.
This painting is fairly limited in its symbol forms, its lollipop trees and sun in the right hand corner, and yet it is well painted in the sense that the paint has actually been used to communicate area, and there has been colour mixing going on. The space is filled and when you look closely at the main symbols of person, a pond with fish in it and creatures at the side, it is seen that they are fairly schematic. They are line drawings in paint. It is the background having been attended to so fully that turns this from a drawing into a painting.
This is a painting that within the time available is relatively complete and well composed. There are some nice textural effects in the foliage, and a variety of tree forms. However, variety doesn't always make for forest, and the strong central tree with its yellow and red blobs has a way of dominating the picture by both position and colour. The fern forms are repeated shapes. There is a believable sense of space with the water diverting behind the trees that are further back. The effect is to give a sense of the river receding away from us. The challenge for this artist would have been to have completed work and exaggerate some of the textural information hinted at in one colour.
This is quite a strong composition with a footbridge over the river, and although the symbols are not well developed, the artist has managed to compose a picture that goes across an entire page to fill the space and give a sense of involvement. It is more the sense of the river coming down towards us that the student has evoked. The tree forms are fairly stereotypical with strong rectangular trunks and triangles or circles on top. There has been some attempt at shading and texture. Probably what is most inventive here is the mixing of the range of browns with the intent of showing form through light and dark. An image has been chosen that evokes bush and a sense of walking across waterways.

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