Ararat sunset

Oil on Canvas 80x40

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Comment by Michael J. Severin on June 16, 2015 at 9:18: A beautiful tribute ..thank you for posting it Riham.

Comment by Riham Afifi on June 16, 2015 at 1:43: Hey micheal.. exactly!! Mount Ararat is where Noahs Arc is said to have landed.. It is an important national & spiritual symbol for the Armenian nation, even though it currently exists on Turkish ground.. I have been lucky to visit Armenia this year & was privileged to watch Ararat, which I admire a lot btw.. u can read here the article I wrote recently along with my paintings.. I hope u will enjoy it too :)

Comment by Michael J. Severin on June 13, 2015 at 3:47: Hi Riham. Your correct. If your painting a famous, well known peak, or any landscape element that is well known, one should stick to accuracy. As far as the placement of the sun, well ...it is only there one time a year ..tomorrow it will be a few degrees north or south. BTW, Mount Ararat, is that the peak that Noah beached the Ark?

Comment by Riham Afifi on June 12, 2015 at 21:20: hi again Micheal, yeah I guess you are right.. i was not going to try to change this one, but perhaps Ill try applying your advise on the next painting.. :)

Actually I had painted these 2 Ararat pieces as an illustration for an article that I wrote about mount Ararat.. thats why I was trying to maintain true geographical position.. but you are right.. we are the artists.. we can do as we like :D

Cheers!

Comment by Michael J. Severin on June 12, 2015 at 3:11: Hi Riham. Yes, it is okay to move anything if the composition warrants it. But do not try to move the sun in this painting ...you will ruin that beautiful sunset glow ....just keep in mind for your next painting. Think of putting your focal point and secondary points of interest at the intersection of the golden means ...or the intersections of the 1/3 grid lines. Riham, don't think about anything in nature has having a "true" place. We as artists move, add, and subtract elements in order to achieve a good composition. Anyway, in your painting, if you had originally put the sun where I suggested, how would I have ever known that the "true" placement was way over there? ...If I decided to add clouds in a "true" cloudless sky, how would anyone ever know that, they were not there ..and even if they were there, you, as artist, are the composer and do anything you want ...well .not anything, I guess? :)

Comment by Riham Afifi on June 11, 2015 at 20:00: Micheal, thank you very very much for taking the time to write these beautiful critiques.. My question to you is: do u think its ok to change the placement of the sun if the true place is to the right & behind the mountains? I'm really not sure.. :)

Comment by Riham Afifi on June 11, 2015 at 19:56: Wow!! Ruby & Jon thank you so much :)

Comment by Michael J. Severin on June 11, 2015 at 14:44: Good job Riham. Perhaps a little darker value in the left foreground land mass. Riham, a little thing about mood and composition: the mood you have set up with your horizontal dominance, soft edges, and your dominance of concave lines, suggest the end of the day peacefulness and solitude. By putting the sun so far over to the right edge of the picture frame, you have inserted a tension in the composition that messes with your mood. The sun .way over there ....makes us nervous and we sense an equilibrium problem. Your intended mood requires more of a balance to keep us relaxed and with peace. A much better placement of the sun would have been more to the left, almost (but not quite) to the center. In that position, your painting has balance ..we sense equilibrium and calmness.