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Thursday 18 April 2019

New Painting on the Easel

The last few weeks, I have had the itch to paint again so I went through my photos from last year's kayak trip. It is always so hard to choose what to paint from all those beautiful photos. I usually look for some drama which most often comes from the skies in July because there is no snow or the colours of autumn at that time of year. On our first evening at our camp site, after dinner, a few of us paddled up the bay to explore. As we paddled the sun was setting and the sky filled with dark clouds that were edged with pink and purple. The rocks became grayer in the waning light and the sky was reflected here and there in the water of the bay.

I decided to make this painting about the sky and so I cropped out a large section of the foreground water and took some other liberties with the design. As I learned last year in my acrylic painting course, I started with a black canvas instead of white. I really liked the result doing it that way. Every time I start painting it seems I have to learn all over again. The paint just doesn't go on smoothly and the first brush strokes are not at all beautiful. I always have to tell myself that it will come as I layer paint on.

My subject.



Blocking in the sky.



Starting to blend the sky.


As I type out this blog, I am noticing that those clouds have to be much darker to move them in front of the light blue sky behind  and above them and the yellow above the tree line needs to be more subdued. Having said that, I will make some artistic decisions that will enhance the painting. I do not want to copy the photo totally.

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