Grand Canyon, Study 2, Final

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Comment by Dorian Aronson on May 21, 2012 at 15:26

Hello Richard..............Just now reading your critique of Jim's painting.  And I have learned so much. It is all in my brain, I so wish I could apply it. 

I have been doing exactly what Jim did, trying to copy yours!  I have 4 of them sitting here not done well enough to submit.  Well I will begin all over right now tonight it is 10:30 PM central time....................dor: ))

 

Comment by Jim Delk on May 19, 2012 at 1:31

Thanks, Richard for you comments.  Yes I agree I followed your example too much and I'm working on a third which will be more my interpretation than yours.  Thanks for the constructive comments about the background.  It really helps. Jim

Comment by susie gregory on May 18, 2012 at 23:50

isn't it amazing?...richard, you're so right about the block in being the stronger of the two - can you just come and stand behind each of us and snatch the brush out of our hands before we get carried away????

Comment by Richard Robinson on May 18, 2012 at 11:20

"Grand Canyon, Study 2, Bock-in" by Jim Delk		"Grand Canyon, Study 2, Final" by Jim Delk
Viewed in Grayscale		Viewed in Grayscale

That's getting there Jim. You've certainly been looking at simplifying the scene and figuring out the major light and shadow families. It looks to me like you copied my own study as much as you looked at the photograph, which is fine but I think you'll get even more learning done next time by trying to figure out how you want to simplify the scene. 

As is often the case your painting was actually working better at the end of the blockin stage (shown on the left) before you started fiddling with it. By viewing both paintings in grayscale we can see clearly why the blockin reads better. You've lost the background's dark/light value structure you had achieved in the block-in. It looks like what you did was lighten all the blue-gray shadow family in the background but left all the lights which made the lights too dark comparatively. You've also exagerated some warm colours there (that big patch of brown in the middle background) which is out of place - it needs to be much cooler due to atmospheric perspective.

Squinting at your scene really helps with this. Our common problem is that as soon as we focus in on one small area of the scene we lose it's relationship with the rest and in fact our brains go ahead and exaggerate the differences in colour and contrast there so that we can see it better, but that is really confusing for us painters.

That reflected light you have added into the shadows in the foreground rocks has really livened them up and you managed to hold back from adding too much detail there which is great. In fact the foreground is looking pretty good and I would just like to see you tackle the background again. Nearly there! Great to see you have already done two separate studies too - great work!