The Gathering Storm

The Lonesome Traveller : Finished !

The Lonesome Traveller : Work in Process

A short poem inspired by my painting "Echoes from the past".

As I endlessly roam along untrodden raods
Seeking lost memories of forsaken homage
Blowing ashes off long forgotten knowledge,
Echoes from the past..burdened with heavy loads
Come telling of valour,of ancient lore
Of invincible fortresses,of battles and gore.

Mustapha FARMATI

Echoes from the Past : Final Version

Dressing up the trees and bushes!

When painting trees and bushes,it's the relationship between light and dark,between hilights and shadows that really makes a difference between a 3dimentional tree,with convincing depth,and a flat thing that would never look like a tree.

Keeping in mind that I'm not looking for things to distract from my focal point,but rather reinforcing it,I kept the tree fairly dark.I also bended it towards the the right for two major reasons.First,to take the viewer INTO the painting and second to work as a pointer to the focal point.

Defining the darkest of my darks

Next step was to define the deepest and darkest areas of the paintings..those are mainly shadows within shadows.I also laid down the background for the tree pn the left,bushes at the foot of the kasbah and the trees and bushes on the right bottom.
It is,I believe,wrongfully assumed that the foreground in a landscape painting is the most important part,where action takes place,and where details are carried out in the finest of details...well,while the foreground is visually the closest part to the viewer,it doesn't have to be the most important in the sense that everything that happenes in the painting should be jammed therein.
In this painting in progress,the focal point isn't in the foreground,so I'm keeping it shadowy and dark to reduce it's visual impact on the viewer and therefore reinforce my sun-bathed focal point,and create more depth,and above all,bring more drama into the painting through this play of light and dark.