Postcard No: 14 The Yellow Boot Walk (Life bythe River)
There are lots of short walks within ten minutes of our home and today’s postcard features a favourite. It starts from a carpark on a little point and winds it way around Castle Forbes Bay where herons pose gracefully, reflecting perfectly in the still water. Then it follows a grassy road alongside a cherry orchard into bushland overlooking the river, up a path at the bottom of someone’s garden and round the sports oval down a laneway and back the way we came.
There’s lots to love about this walk: the herons, picking juicy blackberries in summer, the splash of colour from tiny red berries on the native cherry trees, the perfect reflection of the green navigation marker and the old boots that have been painted yellow and nailed to posts to mark the track.
Adding a figure in landscapes helps to create movement, tell a story and set scale and distance so I added in my husband in his favourite red jumper. Try blocking him out with your fingertip and see how different the painting looks.
If you’re adding a figure you can use the clothing as a way to introduce a complimentary colour that will draw the eye. It’s a small patch of red in the overall colour scheme but it works perfectly as a contrast to all the green.
The yellow boot on the post is the main subject and I took some of that yellow and added it as a highlight on the trees and in the middleground to create harmony.
I feel like this one captures a sunny day on the Yellow Boot Walk quite well but there are a few things I would change if I upscaled it to a larger size.
I would move the figure a bit to the left so he isn’t smack bang in the middle because my eye keeps heading past the boot to the figure and getting stuck there. That red is working a treat but I need to introduce a little bit somewhere else , maybe in the foreground leaf litter.
I always ask myself ” what would I do differently if I painted this again?”
My postcards are all 10x15cm or 15x15cm but even with such a small painting I find it very useful to review the composition, values, shapes and colours and ask myself would I change anything if I repainted the subject. Doing a small study before committing to a large painting can be really helpful in sorting out any lurking problems. I’m pretty confident every postcard that gets upscaled will have some changes!
I’ve already upscaled one of my postcards to a 70x70cm acrylic on canvas. I wonder if you can quess which one?
Lindy Whitton Studio 
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