Saturday, March 29, 2008

Snow may not be white

In this photo (1st one) you may not be able to see real colors on canvas but the snow is now much darker than previous one. Snow on branches are fairly dark gray. But they still look like snow. Now I'm getting some feeling how I could finish this piece.
Also I started "Valley Creek". 20"x26". From the same trip to Stanley, ID, back in Jan. With this piece, I started with much darker under-painting to avoid the same mistake. Even though the creek was very dark, the rest was covered by snow. It was mid-afternoon. Sun was behind me.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Must start darker

I knew I might fall into this pit fall with this lighter value subject, snow. But I did it anyway. I felt I was putting myself in a difficult position in very narrow value range. You can work toward lighter values on top of darker ones while you progress. But not in opposite way. I was comparing subtle differences of whites. But they're not going to stand out because majority of the surface is in similar values.

So, I told myself "Let's start over. It's not going anywhere from here." Then destroyed mainly the mid section and upper section where chains of trees reside by painting over with purplish gray. I'm very happy with the outcome now.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Snow is't always white

After trying some different tones of foreground snow, I came to understand it wasn't so white, or so light, compared to the mountains. But I left that part as is at this moment and moved on to the middle section, which was mostly uncovered area. Started adding more values for low trees.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Challenge of White


I tore down the show at Chez Dominique yesterday. It was the outcome of my entire last year and more. Naturally, I felt my artistic repository inside of me had been emptied and I needed some recharge period. Even though I started working on this piece about a month ago, I've been taking long time to make progress as the result.

After the darkest darks were placed on the canvas, I started examining, or just playing with, various types of whites. I'm sure this piece would get layers of whites until I call it finish. The first white I'm working on now is warm white in the foreground snow. It may be hard to be seen in this dark photo though. The other snow just has very light blue on canvas as underpainting. Those white mountains are gesso white right now.