Capturing a Maine Moment
Recreating a scene seen on the fly… I am trying to recreate something I saw last fall when I could not stop to sketch or even take color notes.
Day 2 is spent building layers of depth in the sky, choosing specific colors to help leaves pop, testing colors for the ocean and checking composition.
Building the layers of depth in the sky means seeing the volumes of the clouds making sure how they are lit to help create that depth. Also what helps is putting one volume in front of another. Therefore, I worked to put one cloud in front of another. This is not so obvious in the picture. Pastels are hard to photograph!
To help make the leaves pop – where I wanted them to pop- I used subtle shifts from blue around the orange yellow leaves and purple around the yellow ones.
Capturing a Maine Scene-2
So what is wrong this this compositionally????
Critical is checking the compositional decisions at this stage while it is still possible to make changes without getting ghost images under the pastel. While pastel is in some ways opaque it is really transluscent and under colors come
Capturing Maine Scene-2
through.
Beneath the sea is green — then there is a dark Cobalt blue. Next a purple gray to tie to the sky. The bottom grasses are not right — time to work on those.
Capturing Maine Scene
Its time to fill the page with color to check values. Now that I have definitely determined the under laying structure and color/values I believe will articulate the feel of the scene as I remember it I can begin to bring the picture up to nuance — now it will be making sure the integrity of the initial strokes of the pastel sticks are used ( first swipe with a stick is like painting with an Asian brush it is used to delinate the desired movement in the object). 11 hours today.