First Painted on April 2022; Redone on November 2023
Reference and Inspiration:
An Old Sunset Painting Before I Had Improved My Fundamentals
When the sun is rising or setting, the colors and contrast of any subject look pretty stunning. Darks are full dark, and lights are really saturated. I probably will find more sunset/rise reference photos like this one.
The photo has pretty poor resolution. But I only needed it for the shapes, values, and hues. I blurred my vision to see those and copy them onto my canvas.
The Wash and Underpainting:
Using Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna to Draw the Right Lines and Values…But Not For This Painting
Typically, I would outline and wash over with varying opacities of brown and blue, as they make a nice dark gray perfect for value gradients. But I did not use that method during the first pass of this painting because I hadn’t adopted it yet. I went right into blocking in color. For not having a roadmap like that, I am happy where the painting netted out.
But, a wash and underpainting could have been helpful still:
I think the proportions of sky-to-trees could have been more accurate in this painting. Using a rule-of-thirds grid and/or an underpainting could have really helped me align things better.
It’s hard to imagine what sizes, shapes, and proportions will look right for the painting’s subjects and objects and their relationships. It becomes more evident once I am pushing and pulling the edges of those subjects and objects. Then, I always relearn that making strokes/marks that are slightly too left, right, fat, tall, angled, etcetera, can really distort whatever I’m trying to render. What looks “right” is precise and distilled over the course of painting, and what looks wrong is every other outcome I don’t want. Those fundamental tools, like grids and underpaintings, can give a painter a more accurate start.
I think I've already shared enough on underpaintings recently, but here's a comprehensive video on perspective grids and scaling (using digital tools). While the team that put that video together are focused on illustration, what they teach is universally applicable.
The Block In:
Intentional Paint Mixing, Filling in Shapes, and Targeting Color Notes of Black, Yellow, Orange, and Blue
This is a small and simple painting. Small paintings always help me learn what fundamentals I’m screwing up, especially with color.
Starting with the darkest dark; the easiest color to mix was the black. Or near black. I think I dipped into Mars Black (a reddish variant) on the first go-around. Recently, I rarely dip right into black. Usually I will mix other colors on my pallet, like blue and brown; or crimson (red), green, and blue.
Speaking of blue: the sky. On the first pass, I used Phthalo Blue, which is way too warm and bright for this. But, at the time, it was the only blue paint I used. I suggest having Ultramarine and Cobalt; they are pretty essential and impossible to mix from other paint. Anyway, I muddied the Pthalo with something, possibly a little Burnt Sienna or orange. For those bright areas near the horizon, I added some white.
The yellow sunset only required a block of Cadmium Yellow (bright and warm) and some white. I added a little red for those indirect areas around the edges. The orange block was purely Indian Yellow, a little Bright Red, and Titanium White.
Yes, there’s some violet-pinkish colors in the shadowy clouds, and that was a tough color to land. During the first pass, I think I did it with crimson and white on the brush, then pulling in some already-painted blue from the sky to add coolness and atmospheric perspective.
What's on my pallet during the repainting:
- Titanium White
- Ultramarine Blue
- Cobalt Blue - Hue
- Cadmium Yellow
- Lemon Yellow - Hue
- Indian Yellow
- Alizarin Crimson
- Sap Green
Painting Challenges & Solutions:
Irregular and Awkward Shapes of Clouds; Warm and Cold Highlight Colors
For the black:
On the second go-around, I mixed Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna (brown), as they make a pretty good dark gray-black, and a painter can easily play with its coolness or warmness depending on the ratio of Blue to Brown.
For the blue:
The better paint to use would have been Ultramarine again, which I did in the second pass. I think I dabbed a little Cobalt Blue for something a little colder, and therefore distant-looking from the atmospheric perspective.
For the yellow:
I had a party with the yellows, using Cadmium, Indian, and Lemon Yellow.
Lemon is cool in temperature, so I used it for the highlights. A cool highlight really stands out as direct sunlight, from my experience. People argue about how to use temperature, and I don’t care that much, just FYI. Maybe I’ll regret writing that one day.
Cadmium covered the rest. Indian was good for the orangey (a real word!) shadows, ripples, and fading light around the edges.
The dreaded orangey purple clouds:
Why were these so agonizing? I had all the other colors going good and a reference photo. Yet getting the saturation and temperature of these clouds gave me a serious headache. Okay, maybe temperature is important. I regret ever writing it in the last paragraph. I think the stress came from how easy it was to inaccurately mix these colors. I made a lot of stingy mud that I had to walk away from, then come back and scrape and wipe off.
It’s one of those sections that I just had to keep screwing around with and noting what worked and what didn’t until it all worked. Shrugs.
Final Impression and Lessons Learned:
Never Too Late to Take a Oil Painting Off the Wall and Refine the Lights, Values, and Shapes
It was nice to look at the first version for a few years and then decide to rework it. As I improve, I would like to apply better skills to old paintings. Refining old work isn’t intuitive, funny enough. I’ll have to remind myself to revisit old paintings every once and awhile.
Painting this one during first go-around wasn’t as easy as I had thought it would be, and it certainly gave me another set of challenges when trying to repaint it. While pretty and simple-looking, these colors were easy to get wrong when mixing.
Part of that might be the angle and intensity of the light source during this time of day. It's warm and bright in concentrated areas, and fades quickly, so the temperature and saturation are changing quickly too. That’s fine if I could paint exactly what I see in the photos every time. But, a lot of the time, my eyes like to fill in colors (that aren’t there) where the light shifts.
The other reason for the challenges might have been the small canvas size. Less space can make things harder. It at least puts more pressure on the accuracy of colors. With a bigger space, I can fool around with the colors more if I don’t place them correctly the first time. They even will dry faster, being spread thin and other areas taking more attention and adding to their dry time. But small ones get very wet very quickly. They really do require less strokes, which could be a good challenge or teaching tool for improving painting fundamentals.
