Oct 19 - 90% covered and a Break

Yesterday you saw the blues going in. Now the canvas is 95 percent covered. I'm still in the cool box as I paint the rocks in the foreground with the "big three" sky colors, creating the illusion of their reflected colors from the blue overhead atmosphere. Variations on those mixes creates the visual interest there. You can click on the image to get a larger verson with more details.

Although the light area at the upper left is in sunlight, I painted it completely with cool mixes to keep it back there.

At this point, I stopped to take a photo because of the warms that are (finally) appearing on the grassy area across the water and on the rocks and pine needles in the foreground. I wanted to share with you the painting at this stage with the cools in place. Compositionally, do you see how the three trunks on the left mirror the lit three trunks on the upper right? Ties the whole image together with implied lines going between them--like a bridge across the water!

As long as the painting holds up with cool box mixes, adding the warms in smaller percentages will always enhance, not destroy, the composition and color balance. As I'll be painting so much detail in the foreground, I want you to have a resting place, separate from the horses across the water. In fact, those horses will be much less prominent than shown by the areas unpainted, because when I paint them, I'll pick colors and values that will have them blend in--just like the "Morning Pasture" painting from September 14th's blog entry (opens a new page).

I just love a painting at this stage--the source material and the painting are now distantly related, yet the details that will fully tell the story are not yet in place. When you paint, do you put the focal point in first? How much more can you get, if you delay that addition until the rest of the canvas is singing along? Now that my canvas has the basic colors in place, the fun begins as I make each area more interesting to you, the viewer. Eye candy!

You can see my entire blog here.

Color System information can be found HERE.

If you need to email me directly, please click here.