The Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil by Claude Monet: Session 4

{progress at the beginning of the day}

{progress at lunch time}

{progress at the end of the day}

For session 4, I worked on the left side of the composition, and because I thought about how I was going to proceed before I got to the gallery, I was able to cover a lot of territory.

Because I am copying this painting, and I try to re-enact the entire painting, just not the end result, I spent some time during this session laying in some textural elements that will eventually be painted over.

{detail of progress at lunch time}

Specifically I painted in the lower part of the stairs with thick highlights on the edge of the risers, however Monet must have decided that this element took away from the composition, because he later added all the vegetation to the left side of the stairs narrowing the stairs visually. So consequentially, there is a ton of impasto paint under what seem likely to be nasturtium vines by the color of the yellow-green foliage and the orange specs that represent flowers.

So today I painted in the stairs with the thick impasto texture with the intention to paint over all this area during the next session.