It was another sunrise with quickly-changing skies. I had to work very quickly to capture the colors on these two 8″ x 10″ canvasboards.
The first one includes darker colors and higher contrast. (In real life, the reds aren’t that vivid, blue-ish, or light.)
The sun was just coming up (in back of me) and so the hills were still very dark… but the painting’s hills are a lighter green than in this photo.
Mostly, the higher clouds and sky caught the sun’s rays; everything else was relatively dark and sometimes subdued.
The morning’s second oil sketch is below. As you can see, the contrast was not so extreme and the hills were lit by the sunlight.
The snow was whiter, the red in the sky was diminished, and the clouds were fluffier and more clearly defined.
If I’d been painting realistically, it was the kind of sky where an artist would be tempted to add a colorful hot air balloon. It was that kind of “picture perfect” coloring, and almost too-perfect cloud formations.
Mostly, these are color references. They were so hastily worked, unless someone already knows that the subject is a band of trees on a hill, with snow in the foreground… well, I’m not sure that it’s representational enough to discern the subject.
Because of the pace of my work yesterday morning (when I painted these), the colors are fairly vivid. They’re far more energetic than they look in the photos; I’m still learning how to tweak the colors with this new camera.
Later in the day, I completed another, full-size painting. However, I wasn’t going to post it here because it’s not my usual style or subject. In fact, it has an odd backstory.
However, I’m waiting for the right light because the colors are a little difficult to capture in a photo. And, since I’ll be out most of today, I may not have that painting posted here until early next week.