Patching up the Field

Yesterday I saw orange flags in a wide open field on campus and I speculated that it meant impending construction. Today there was a truck next to the field, but the workers were pouring out wheelbarrows full of top soil onto the positions with the flags. After that they raked the earth piles flat. So they were actually patching up the field, which is heavily used by next door students for sports from the private school (seen in the background). Pitch forks lowered as they say on the internet, that means we don't have to be angry about it anymore. The other neat thing was that the mounds of earth were a very dark reddish brown which contrasted nicely against the green grass. One of the workers was peeking at the painting with each load and told me that it was pefecto in Spanish. The grass effect was something I worked out last night with some test paintings, in the end I settled for a medium value green background with darker green painted over in short directional brush strokes. The green was painted around the flowers, then the blank spot daubed in yellow followed by orange. The inclusion of the worker was a continuation of the Van Gogh theme of showing laborers, for example in the famous Sower with Setting Sun. The link takes you to the Van Gogh museum web page. We were there in real life back in 2018, and it the artwork was quite impressive. 
 

Patching up the Field, watercolour 8 x 10" 80lb, May 2024