I haven’t posted about my “sunset” painting for a little while, so I’ll try to play catch-up. For the past couple of weeks I’ve worked on the water in the stream; the landscape; and, for the past week, the sky. Last week in class i asked teacher for ideas on how to correct some of my errors in the sky, especially in respect to the direction in which I’d (mis)painted some of the clouds. He suggested something i found really shocking but went ahead and tried it anyway. (I didn’t post last week because the initial step of this process — painting over large portions of the sky with a titanium white mixed with a very small amount of blue — made the painting full of big white blobs. Next step,, which i worked on during the week, was to begin to apply several coats of a thin gray glaze, all the while shaping the several areas to improve the overall flow of the clouds.). Today in class i added darker gray and adjusted my brush stroke to better help those clouds look like clouds. It’s also too soon to add some orange and red back into the upper parts of the sky — with oils you just have to be patient.
As to the 4 white stripes you can see — they are a beginning step in making the yellow areas of the sky really shine. So — my instructions are to outline each of the areas around the purple closed S (where the yellow will be) with white. Wait for that to dry; then paint yellow on top of the white. I couldn’t start on the outline of the purple clouds yet because that canvas area still wet; and colors would just run together
LJ and NJ 