Morning Coffee Club, part 2

Welcome back coffee clubbers.  No one is to be left out; tea drinkers are welcome here too! To review the last installment in the development of this painting, check back to the blog entry of  September 2.  Today I uploaded the same image, cropped to get a better look into the distance, and a new version with some recent changes, also cropped.  Basically you are seeing the top 3/5 of the painting.

Last time I mentioned letting the painting tell you what it wants to be. This is how I proceed with most of my work.  So I started with this image as is and took a good look to see what was already there for me. In the upper right hand corner the rock shapes are way off in the distance.  How do I know this?  They are darker and less distinct in detail.  From the vantage point of the viewer, you are unable to see into the far distant horizon, where mountains or other formations would become somewhat hazy and even less detailed. Of course, as the shapes appear closer to the viewer, they become larger and more detailed, so this is one of my tasks in proceeding.  In addition, I looked to see what else might be going on out there. This is in the eyes of the painter. What one chooses to see may be different for each of us.  I saw signs of a deep canyon, winding somewhat down and left and turning back to the right just past center.

In order to enhance the painting's wish for a canyon, I removed or painted out some of the lower formations, darkened the deep area at the curve, and allowed the canyon to widen out some as it came down and forward.  The rock formations in center right are of different geological formation than many of those behind.  Those of you who know these badland areas know this happens in nature all the time here, very quickly and suddenly, so I continue to paint the rocks as they want to be.  Even though the weather in the badland areas can be parchingly dry, I am sensing there is some water in this canyon, so next time I will have to find a way for it to show up.

I want to stress that you should not be afraid of using color, of experimenting and layering to get just what you want. In nature the array of colors is phenomenal, even in places where you superficially see everything as basically one or two colors.  These are the colors I used in this painting so far (acrylic paints):  cerulean blue, titanium white, burnt sienna, burnt umber, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow medium, Indanthrone blue, crimson, cobalt teal, violet oxide, cadmium orange hue, Indian red.  This is quite an array of colors to use for painting a basically (so far) blue and burnt orange painting.  You see many richly dark areas.  Do I use black paint to get that depth?  NEVER!  We'll talk about that next time.