Painting Yoga in the Park

​©Annette Bartlett-Golden, Yoga in the Park. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches.

Painting Yoga in the Park
By Annette Bartlett-Golden

It was late in the day as I strolled through the Arboretum. Afternoon light spilled across the grassy commons and lit up the treetops. As I turned the corner, I was surprised to see a group of people sitting on mats performing yoga poses. This scene, with figures in a landscape and strong afternoon light, subjects I am interested in exploring, caught my imagination and I decided that I would paint it. That was over three years ago. At the time, I was busy with other projects. Time passed and when January came around I set a goal of starting and finishing the painting, Yoga in the Park, by the end of spring.
 
Creating the composition turned out to be a complicated process. When I took my reference photos, I didn't want to disturb the yoga class so I was only able to take a few pictures of the scene. In all the photos some of the people were obscured by greenery. That meant I had to work out the composition in the studio. To do this, I needed to gather more information in the form of reference photos and sketches. I used part of the group of figures in my photos and added a fifth figure to balance the grouping. For the last figure (on the far left), I needed reference photos. Since I was available and knew what pose I wanted, I ended up as the figure in that photo. Color balance and harmony is also an important part of composition so I changed the shirt colors of the people to make the figures more dynamic.

Yoga in the Park with several of the reference materials I used to paint it.

While I liked the background in my reference photo, I decided it would make a better composition if I flipped its orientation from left to right. I also wanted to add some color to the background so I painted the crepe myrtle in the back right and the flower grouping in the foreground in full bloom. For these I scoured the internet to find pictures of the plants in bloom. For some, I had to decide what sort of plants and flower color they would be since it wasn't clear from the photo. I ended up with Joe Pye weed (the tall light purple flowers), and yellow irises next to a pink dwarf hydrangea.

While I began working on the painting in January, it was a lengthy process made more difficult because of frequent starts and stops for long periods of time. Having to come back to a painting after a long break takes a bit of reorienting and doesn't make for a smooth process. So I am particularly glad to finally finish this challenging painting. Now that I have a solid composition, I think I may paint the same scene in watercolors. I’m curious to see how it will turn out.