Conveying a Feeling

In her landscape paintings, Olga Rybalko captures the sights, smells and sounds of nature

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Olga RybalkoMy art is all about capturing a place—not the exact look but how it feels to be there. When I paint, I feel like the sights, smells, and sounds of the place surround me. I want the viewer to feel that same sensation, a sense of awe at the natural world. It is the elusive emotion that I think most landscape painters strive to convey, and I’d like to share with you some ways that I have discovered for capturing this on canvas.

A sense of depth is one of the main aspects in a painting that can truly inspire that awe, that feeling of gazing at a towering mountain even though it’s painted on a measly 11-by-14-inch panel. I use several techniques to try to capture depth in a landscape, but firstly, the planning stages of an artwork are crucial to ensure success in the finished piece.

For me, the artwork begins with gathering reference photos while travelling. I spend a lot of time looking at a scene to find the right vantage point, planning the composition and getting different shots as the landscape changes between the morning and evening light. This particular composition for the demonstration was a lucky shot that didn’t need much adjustment apart from the top of the rock structure, which needed some more breaking up. As none of us are perfect, neither is nature, and one has to use their own judgement while moving around trees and rocks that are not quite in the right place.