Colorado Sunrise #2, 16 x 20, UART 500

Picture at completion of demo

I’m using a rainy, lousy day to complete the painting that I did as a demo for the Gaithersburg Art Association last night.  We talked a lot and I had chosen a fairly large (16 x 20) surface to work on in a short time. I never got to the bottom at all and the rest of it is pretty rough. However, I brought the 12 x 12 with me so they could see where I was going.  One of the major things I did this morning was to change the size of the two trees. In the demo piece they are almost the same size. I shortened the one of the left to make the one on the right more dominant and the clear center of interest.  I refined colors and form a lot. One of the difficulties that I’ve created for myself is that I changed the light source from the photo.  In the original, the light is coming from the left. But I wanted to have it coming from the right, so I had to keep remembering that when looking at the darks and lights in the black and white photo.  I had a really good time sharing my processes and love of pastel with others last night. (Being an extrovert really does help!)  Now, I’m going to attack this picture one more time on a 20 x 24 sheet of Rives toned with burnt umber. Have decided to do an underpainting on top of that. Might be too dark. We’ll see–stay tuned!  (But probably not today)