I painted two paintings this month from my own photos. Both of them were same-day skyscapes that I took with the idea of painting them.
Pink Sky Power Lines
What I like about the photo: Complex power lines, pink cloud, crescent moon.
What I didn’t like about the photo: It didn’t really capture the overall pinkness of the sky at this time. Here’s another photo from the same time. I color-corrected it slightly but the photo doesn’t even capture how very pink it felt.
This is from almost a month later, December 30, but it was a similar sort of pinkish day. This is one of the few photos that had reasonably accurate color out of the camera; you have to snap it so quickly that the phone doesn’t correct the pink away.
Anyway. Back to the painting.
Colors: Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Turquoise, Naples Yellow Deep, Quin Red (PR209), Indanthrone Blue + TRO (silhouettes)
What I like about the painting: Did OK with the power lines, despite my consistent hand shake. I like the color palette.
What I could have done differently:
- Using less granulating blues? I kind of like it, but I kind of don’t.
- Using more blue would have set off the pink cloud more, but I like the amount of pink also. I think my conflictedness makes this painting tough to critique.
- Shadowy roof should be more muted; I used pure Indanthrone Blue but should have mixed it with TRO as I did for the power pole.
- It might have been interesting if I had attempted to streetlight.
Cloud and Tree
I zoomed in on the tree, because I was most struck by the image of an almost perfectly round tree in front of the complex cloud.
Colors: PBRS, PBGS, Naples Yellow Deep, Quin Red (PV19), Cobalt Blue, white gouache, Indanthrone Blue + TRO (trees)
What I like abou the painting:
- I think I got across the roundness of the tree.
- The sky colors are a combination of Phthalo Blues Red Shade *and* Green Shade, which is unorthodox but I don’t hate it. Because of the texture of the paper, the sky still appears to have some texture even though it is smooth paints.
What I could have done differently:
- I’m not sure what I should have done instead, but I don’t feel that I got the cloud right. I used white mixes because of the pastels, which I think is an okay idea, but maybe it’s just overworked or something.
- Too much yellow I think. I could have faded to white. I think the yellow undercoat makes the blue too dull.
Conclusion
It seems that most of the time when I paint my own photos (or take photos to paint later), it’s a sky! I love skies, and I have a lot more to learn about how to paint them well. I’m thinking about ways to incorporate more skyscapes into my daily life.