"Reading by the lake" - Impressions of a European Summer

We had gone for a cycling tour with a couple of friends a few weeks ago, along a picturesque route dotted with small fresh water lakes in the Rhine-Neckar region. Summer is finally truly here and we could go out leaving the jackets/umbrellas at home. Phew! And here I was thinking we are going to go from winter to winter bypassing everything in between :0 Wherever you go in Germany, a water body is never too far away and that's what I love about this country. In my view this holds good for Europe as a whole, the parts that I have visited. Be it a river flowing right in the middle of a bustling city or a lake out of nowhere. We managed to cycle about 40 kms, which is not much but a great deal for us considering how unfit we are! My husband and I rarely put ourselves through any form of exercise and we were quite surprised that we could cycle so much, that too with the daughter sitting behind us alternately. It became too unbearably hot in the afternoon forcing us to call it a day.

During the ride we stopped by this lake for a while, just to relax for sometime and munch on some snacks. There were hordes of people by the lake, some taking a swim, some just reading a book, introducing little children to the water and so on. A visual delight for the figure painter I'd say. I clicked a few references and this is the first one. I have one more in progress, and hope to do a few more.

Reading by the lake
Acrylics on Canvas, 10 by 10 inches.
© 2010 Nithya Swaminathan
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I still have not mustered the courage to do the figure with the knife. Just did an initial layer with the knife for the woman, and later switched to the brush. Makes life a lot simpler that way. The surroundings though are done entirely with the knife and I hope to slowly get to a stage where my figures also are done with the knife.

There are some things that I tried with this one - a square canvas to start with. I haven't painted on a square canvas after my apples series more than a year ago. I felt it would suit this image and just went ahead. Also, usually I paint the sides with a neutral color - black or brown. This time I thought black would look ridiculous with this canvas, as it has such bright colors. So went ahead and continued the painting itself to the sides too. Too bad that I did not take a photo from the side, will do it tomorrow. The painting flows over to the sides too and doesn't look odd even when hung without a frame.

I quite like how it turned out :) Let me know what you think.