This morning’s walk was up Beacon Hill again and I sat and did some more digital painting:
I did take a photo but ended up only using it to pick two or three colours to get me started. After I’d selected a dark brown, I hid the photo and sketched what was in front of me and then gradually built it up, first with a ‘watercolour’ brush and then with a variety of other tools.
Selecting colours was quite challenging. Even on a fairly overcast morning and with the iPad shining as brightly as it could, it was hard to judge them. I’m quite pleased with the result though and it does achieve the goal of observing the landscape more carefully. For example, towards the right of the frame you might make out a scribbled wind turbine that I only spotted while part way through the piece.
It is the scribbled details that bring the piece together. I began with greens, yellows and reds at the bottom as I explored the texture of the foreground and I spotted how the picture seemed enhanced by obscuring the lines of the original sketch with short strokes of colour. I developed this further and also began to observe other details, like the field that is shown by that band of orange hashing just under the half way line.
I am reasonably pleased with the overall result although I am pondering going back to more of a digital collage style next time – like my first piece in this recent set of work from late April but laying blocks of ‘paper’ based on an observed sketch rather than one drawn over a photo.