Zaca Creek Sunset WIP

Day1....

Just finished this one and along the way planned to take photos of the progress but I kept forgetting. Sometimes you just get too into things to remember the camera sitting next to you. This is number 3 of the large 36"x36" paintings on canvas. I wish I had stretched it tighter...my first time working with pre-gessoed canvas. I've wet the back with warm water to see if that would tighten it a little more but it still feels a little baggy. If anyone knows another way short of taking out the staples and re-stretching let me know before I go that route....and no, I can't put in corners keys as this was a handmade frame with no key slots.

In this shot you can see I've done the sky minus some small tweaking. I like to work from the sky down most of the time. This of course makes you paint from background to foreground, layering as you go into the finished piece. I like it that way because of the sky looks good then I get kinda charged up to finish to mid and foregrounds. This piece was all about the sky so I basically painted my subject focal point first. All else supports the sky. I had to take this at an angle because of the wet paint.

After I was happy with the sky I began to add my trees and then foreground. The trees were a dark value of green with some red in my ref so I kept it that way. Now that it is all finished up I wish I hd made it a little lighter in overall value there if only becuase it is hard to photograph this dark a value. It works in real life here so I won't change it now. The foreground grasses were a Yellow Ochre but I was almost out and used Raw Sienna mixed with Alizarin Crimson and some White and came up with this orange tint. It looked ok at first but once on there I hated it...too strong. I later bought more YO and mixed white and AC to get what I wanted. That's what I get for being lazy. I keep that white edge there when blocking in the colors to keep them from mixing. As I tweak the greens I'll brush up into the sky area...this gives it the last minutes of time to setup before the green goes over it. Those sky colors will cause the greens to go blue grey. I could have waited but I wanted to get body if it on the first day. Day 2 was for working the foreground colors.

Day 2...

In the end, once all 3 areas were done I ended up with this on day 2....

The skyholes in the tree and patchy areas in the greens were added on day2. I also went back in and added some highlights to the lower right of the sky. I think it came out ok but wish I had gone slightly darker in the sky and slightly lighter in the trees on the hills. I also think I need to find a better way to do grasses like this. So many things to learn as you go.