In my last post i mentioned that i had struggled with getting the color to “work” — especially all that orange. Both before and after the posting i kept trying to figure out just what all that orange was actually doing. Was it in part part of the rock, or was it all reflected light from the sun? Following the posting, i continued to try to meet the challenge, but eventually i took a good look at the reference photo and the painting and decided, “enough! “. It was clearly just not going to work. So i took a different approach — decided i would make the painting with a softer touch, replace the oranges with muted pinks, add plenty of color to the sky, show pinkish reflections in the water and especially on the mountain face, add some pink to the lighted side of the house, and basically pretend it’s now about a sunset where the light is beginning to fail but where there is still lovely color from the setting sun.

Forgot to add reference photo. This will show you how why i’ve had difficulty with the color of those mountains.

I haven’t posted for a while, mainly because the two projects i’ve been working on have had their challenges for me — lots to figure out. With this one, the most difficult part was getting a sense of depth/3 dimensionality in the mountainsides. After that there were issues of balance with hue. The painting is not quite finished, but it’s far enough along for you to get a pretty good idea of where i’m going and where i need to go.