Well, when i took a closer look at this work after my last post, it was clear that there was quite a bit i ought to do to get it looking more as i wanted it to look. So — i repainted the trees, changing shapes where indicated; changing colors and values, same. I added a number of new plants and subtracted a few, to improve the grouping and also the overall shape of the area covered by them. I worked on the stream to make the edges look more realistic. I added shading to the mountains to improve the hues. i adjusted colors of snow to reflect better the reflected-sun areas. And finally, gave another coat of paint to the sky. Does that leave anything still undone? Well, if i had the whole thing to do over again, i might change the way i painted all the plants. But you know, live and learn. And overall, i’m pretty pleased with it.

In the past week i’ve made a number of additions, subtractions, i’ve., changes to this painting. Added more shrubbery and worked on adjusting some of the color to reflect light reflection. Worked on making the direction the half-frozen stream takes to make it more realistic — maybe! Added layers to the mountains and adjusted some of the values in the trees. The painting is further along, but not fnished — though probably close.

I started a new painting a few days ago, having decided that “the barn” needed a break. The reference photo for this new one is from a painting magazine, and it is a photo of a (prize-winning) painting. I was quite taken with the bright oranges in the bushes against the backdrop of the snow. One of the challenges here will be to try to capture hue variation in the snow. There are blues, purples, yellows, etc., depending on how and from where the light hits. Only a couple of layers on so far, and obviously i need to put in a lot more of the shrubbery. Reference photo is below.

Well, this has been an experiment—-trying to imagine what the painting would look like if i changed the time of day from some time in the afternoon, to sunset. After the fact, my teacher, who had not been in on the design in the first place, said this idea was not my best — that it’s never a good idea to try to alter the time of day in such a dramatic way. The other part of the experiment — working from two different photographs for different parts of the painting — is fairly common practice, but also not so simple as you might think.

Anyhow, my aim in the past couple of weeks of working on this has been to try to lighten up the whiole painting by pretending that it is earlier in the sunset progression than the original sunset photo would indicate. Another experiment! This all meant i had to imagine what the llight was going to be doing. Didn’t quite work, but a good learning experience!