Sunday, April 24, 2011

Plein Air after a while





 I haven't painted outside quite a while. Now it's time for that. Fortunately Fri-Sat when I planned a Portland trip on my motorcycle the weather was perfect. I stopped by Nisqually Wildlife Refuge in the morning on Friday I painted sky over the delta. At the time I was painting I didn't realized I didn't push values enough. Also the thin clouds were much warmer. I later realized about the value problem when I was painting trees on a hill side at Washington Park in Portland in Sat morning. You can easily see the difference, can't you? For both I probably spent about 2.5 hours. For the tree painting I don't have any complaint with colors I chose. But I couldn't paint steepness of the hill side enough somehow. It's actually much steeper than shown in the painting. I probably made those trees too tall in comparison with relative vertical placement.

Anyhow, I'll keep going outside to paint more this spring and summer.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Sunset in Idaho

I started a new landscape painting. This one is also from one of last ID vacation photos. Sun was setting into the horizon while I was driving toward south east  on I-84. On my left, the snow mountains were reflecting the last light of the sun, getting darker and darker from the bottom toward the top. I couldn't resist my desire to take photos despite the fact it's illegal to stop my car on the interstate highway in a none emergency situation.
The size is 14"x28".

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Most of key shapes are in place now

Well, as always in my painting processes, I keep struggling to place the shapes. This one was particularly difficult because of complicated shapes and relationship between them. But I think now I'm somewhat satisfied with where they are. And I can start focusing mainly on the colors.

So the real challenge has just started for this painting.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Defining Mid - Lighter values

Started refining mid values in comparison with lighter values which are the values for the water and ice. At this moment I don't use much colors but just use reddish purple of the rocks and trying to control the values. The water eventually needs to be more bluish while the ice is purplish because the colors of rocks can be seen through.