Sunset Studies

We had some really good sunsets this summer, and I managed to get out a few times to attempt to paint some studies. They are such a challenge, as things change very rapidly during the last half hour of the day. The drill pretty much is: look up at scene, decide what to do on the painting, look down to mix paint, apply paint to canvas, look up and realize all colors and values (and cloud shapes) in the scene have changed! Repeat until dark, or until the painting is ruined! What I've learned is that you must either be extremely fast and efficient, or you must memorize the scene at a particular point in time and ignore whatever changes appear. This is difficult since the colors tend to become better and better until the sun actually sets or goes behind the clouds. Another approach is to sketch in the composition based on the cloud shapes about a half hour before sunset, then slam in the colors at the right time. Of course, the problem is that the cloud shapes change and often look better.

Then there is the whole matter of how to paint the sun itself, making it look both bright and colorful at the same time...using lots of white is NOT the solution! I'm still working on this.

These two studies are both 6x8 oil on canvas boards. In the first one, it was the dramatic cloud formations that caught my eye. I like the resulting study, and feel like I captured the gesture of the dark clouds and also the "controlled chaos" of the sky above the sun. Unfortunately I do see the appearance of some kind of animal head in the dark clouds (with the sun being the eye). The second painting was more about the overall color harmony of the scene, everything was bathed in an amazing peach/yellow light.



These were extremely difficult to scan and get good jpegs - I had to do a lot of color adjusting and they still don't look as good as the originals. But hopefully you can get the idea! I plan on working on some studio paintings of sunsets this winter.