"Azusa Canyon Morning"12"x16"
I think with most artists there is a love for light and it's effects on color. Naturally this would cause artists to love morning and evening light...both my favorite times of day and the best time to head out of the house with a camera or pochade box if you are quick enough to catch it on your canvas. I suppose you could spend the rest of your life just trying to capture evening light and it's many variations of light on many scenes....happening daily! Morning light is just as spectacular but I think in a more subdued way. Cool colors frequented by explosions of warms.
This Easter morning I headed up into Azusa canyon to take some reference photos of morning light and it's effect on the canyon walls. I wanted to get shots of the pale filtered light and then try variations of that in paintings. This one is my first from that trip and I pushed the pale light that would recede on more distant background mountains. If you look at my ref you can see that the pale light was darker and really made the foreground hillside foliage contrast better. On lightening the background hills I lost some of that contrast...but that's ok, this was about pushing that pale light, not contrast. 
2 comments:
Once again you achieve the effect that you seek. Lovely morning light. There's another picture to be had from this reference - including that lovely warm, vibrant bush in the front of the photograph. I understand why you have not included it here but it is begging to be rendered.
Hi Mick,
You have a good eye. When I see these mountains, and I've lived directly below them all of my life, I see so many things I would love to paint. The problem is most things wouldn't make great composition art-wise.
The colors and light are everywhere in the mountains but good composition is a chore for most of the things that catch my eye. Maybe I'll get better at that...figuring out how to compose what I see...what gets my eye. Hope so. Thanks Mick.
Ron
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