Sunrise

Just finished this today. I painted this using another artist work as a model to try to get the feel of a luminous landscape.

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Comment by Lyndon Baxter on January 23, 2012 at 15:03: Steve, I have a bit of a dilemma, I was trying to use the sky to set the mood of the painting. It had been raining just before the photo was taken and still very overcast until there was a last subdued burst of colour from the setting sun. However, it was the foreground which I wanted for the focal point with the rocks and swirling water.

I think your right with your photoshop version but unfortunately, I can't do anything about the horizon at least until I've finished the painting then I can cut a bit of the top before framing.

I saw the first lesson with Johannes Vloothuis but to get it I had to get up at 3.15 AM to log-on at 3.30AM and that's a bit of an ask so I think I'll want until the recorded versions are available but your right, he is an excellent instructor. I'll post the finished painting as soon as its finished.

Comment by Steve McArthur on January 23, 2012 at 14:25: I was curious about what your painting might look like with less clouds and a higher horizon line so I ran it through Photoshop and this is what I came up with. I guess it just boils down to what a person likes.

Comment by Steve McArthur on January 23, 2012 at 14:14: Very nice painting Lyndon. The composition works well and I like the colors. I especially like the way I can see the translucency of the waves.

I'm currently participating in a 4 week online class entitled "Essentials of Painting Skies". It's free and is taught live by Johannes Vloothuis. He is very good artist and teacher.

I remember one thing that he said was if you don't want the sky to dominate the painting don't put any/many clouds in it.

He also said to raise or lower the horizon line if it happened to cut the painting in half.

Comment by Lyndon Baxter on January 23, 2012 at 12:53: Steve, I'm glad you got your gel - sounds like your on the right track!

Re the "sunset painting" one of the great things with acrylics is that there's no errors really because its so simple to repaint over what you don't like. Currently, I am working on a 4'x2' canvas with a lot of sky and I don't want it to dominate, the version I'm at is the 4th version of the sky and I'm still not quite happy, so guess what? ... I'll just keep painting over it until I am satisfied.

I attach the wip to show what I mean:

Comment by Steve McArthur on January 23, 2012 at 8:44: Here is the original Lyndon. I can see that the greens are way off, which is probably the reason for the perspective problem.

I don't know if I should spend more time trying to correct this painting or move on to another one. I think I'll try to do better next time and leave this one as it is... as a lesson learned.

My Chroma gel medium came in yesterday along with the 250ml jars of paint. This stuff is great! I was able to mix equal parts of paint and gel with no loss of saturation. Plus, you can get the 250ml jars for just a couple of bucks more than the big 80ml tubes which makes it much more cost effective.

I painted a little with it last night and I noticed I was much less stingy with applying paint to canvas and the gel allowed me to put the paint on thick enough to see the brush strokes, just like oils. An added benefit of using the gel was it dried with a sheen rather than dull. I'm thinking that this may well be my new medium of choice.

Comment by Lyndon Baxter on January 22, 2012 at 18:54: Steve, I really like your sky and the water reflections but you're right about the greens, my guess is that it would be heavily shadowed with just the hint of reflected light.

Its difficult to say if its your error or the other artist's but the headland on the left looks like a bent claw, it seems to have two distinct planes or two different perspectives. One with vanishing point somewhere up in the sky while the horizontal plane goes off two the left.

I'm not very good at this stuff, (constructive critique) so I hope this is of some assistance.

Comment by Steve McArthur on January 21, 2012 at 7:57: Would appreciate any suggestions on improving this painting. I'm thinking that maybe the greens are too light.