From certain vantage points in my neighborhood, you can see a tree-covered hillside, giving the impression that I am in a much more rural area than I am. (It’s actually a small park surrounded by city.) This fall I found myself taking pictures of it in various times of day, weather, and lighting conditions. Inspired by Monet and other artists who paint the same subject at different times of day and year, I decided to paint them!
Photo to Painting
Gray Sky
The hillside looks pretty straight in this photo, though in other views it has more of a curve, which I wish I would have emphasized. This is direct watercolor (I didn’t undersketch) which resulted in some haphazard, unplanned edges, like the weird flat tree in the foreground. Sketching would have helped with both the hill shape and the tree shapes.
Colors: I used a Winslow Homer-inspired color palette of Prussian Blue, Quin Gold, Gold Ochre, Quin Burnt Orange, and Pyrrol Crimson. Prussian Blue mixed nice greens, and I like the emphasized yellow/gold. Comparing to other photos below, I think I could have made the contrast lower in the back trees to match the lighting condition. The pop of white in the upper left didn’t work as well as I wanted. I also think I could have made the sky more pink/violet.
Blue Sky
I exaggerated the tilt of the hill here, which I think makes it look more distinctive. I undersketched, so I was more successful at separating the layers of background evergreens, green midground trees, and colorful foreground trees.
Colors: I used Phthalo Blue Red Shade and Lavender for the sky. For the trees, I used Prussian Blue, Gold Ochre, Venetian Red, and Payne’s Gray. With direct sunlight creating high-contrast shadows, Payne’s Gray was a helpful shortcut. As with the previous scene, I enjoyed using Pyrrol Crimson for a surprising flash of red.
Golden Hour
This is partially undersketched: I sketched the left tree and two layers of foreground trees, but not the back ridge or the sky. Probably sketching the back ridge would have helped me to give it a planned shape and to gauge how big the sky needed to be.
The sky went down quickly and easily, but I struggled a lot with the foreground trees: how bright or muted should they be? how soft or hard should the edges be? I kept changing my mind which resulted in the paper being damaged.
Blue Hour
I made the sky too light, but I was most fascinated by the bold orangey color of the trees caught by the last rays of setting sun. The secret weapon here is Transparent Pyrrol Orange (PO71).
Dusk
Direct watercolor. A sketch would have helped me keep the shape of the ridge more rounded, less pointed, and keep the orange streak smaller compared to the landscape. Color-wise, I always find it difficult to keep gray-violet clouds muted enough.
Spotted Clouds
I like how the clouds turned out here. Direct watercolor again; I got a little lost in the landscape and just sort of dropped in Ultramarine Blue for atmosphere.
Rain and Mist
Not exactly the same but a similar feeling. The back layer being wet-on-damp was crucial here. I mixed a gloomy gray-blue with lots of palette colors and white.
The Weird Light
The photo is not very good because it is out of focus, but I love the monochrome color effect. I chose a mostly-monochrome color palette using only Gold Ochre as a variation from a mixed gray-gold-brown.
The Moon
I found this real crescent moon and graded sky utterly captivating.
I think the colors in the painting are closer to life than the photo. The paper buckled a bit but the gradient is nice. I could have angled the moon better, and there are some imperfections in my masking (using washi tape cut into the shape of a crescent moon).
Sunset on a Cloudy Day
This photo is not very representative. In real life the clouds seemed more lavender, and the bit of sky peeking through strikingly pink. The painting, began the same day, is more from memory than photo.
Colors: Light valued Perylene Red underpainting. Lavender, Cobalt Blue, and white cloud layer. Payne’s Gray, Indanthrone Blue, and Venetian Red in the hillside. I also tried to cut in some silver tree boughs with white, but I’m not sure it came across.
Tri-color Sunset
This is much more in my comfort zone: a silhouette against a blue-to-yellow gradient with pink clouds. My favorite type of scene!
Again, it’s direct watercolor, and I didn’t pre-sketch, so the ridge isn’t the right shape or anything. I made a hill and it drifted to being center-pointed, because that’s just how things go if you don’t presketch.
Colors: Naples Yellow Deep, Phthalo Blue GS, Quin Red (PR209), and Payne’s Gray primarily; some support from Burnt Sienna Deep (PR101) and Perylene Red (PR178), to modulate the pink and mute the blue.
Lessons
Undersketching… has value (sigh)
As I mentioned in the notes for several of the paintings here, I tend to gravitate toward direct watercolor, but sketches really truly do help to keep a complex landscape organized. I don’t usually feel it’s necessary or desirable to undersketch sky elements like clouds, but the landscape really benefits from it. Sketching helps with: the shape of the ridge overall; the placement of specific focal points such as individual highlight trees; the proportion of the painting that should be landscape vs sky; separation of the layers.
The landscape makes the sky
Characteristically for me, “paintings of the ridge” are really paintings of the sky above the ridge. I tend to be drawn to these scenes because of the dramatic skies, and I enjoy painting them. Typically, my skies take up 2/3 or more of the painting.
Still, the landscape is really important, even if all you care about is the sky. I didn’t really understand until the repetition in this experiment how much the landscape defines and supports the story of the sky by reflecting the quality of of the light and other atmospheric elements.
Would a bright blue sky be as convincing without a high-contrast, sunny scene below? Would mid-tone skies “read” as sunset without warm golden hour lighting in the landscape? Would a gray sky read as rainy without misty layers of trees receding into nothingness? Even the sunset skies I’m so fond of painting tend to look just like abstractions until the silhouette of the land is painted in front of it.
Do the thing
I had collected photos for a month before I started to paint. An intimidating thing about this project was my concern that I would not be able to do it justice. While I of course see things I could have done better, and still could do better if I continue this project, I’m happy that I jumped in. You have to start somewhere. It is only by doing the project that you learn the skills you need to do the project.