I really enjoyed this one, though it didn’t all go according to plan and I had to feel my way to the finish line after a blazing early start. It was inspired by an incredibly long sunset and twilight I saw on a road trip through rolling hills, full of amazing and improbable colours and shadows. The painting isn’t from a reference photo but rather from memory and imagination…
A couple of yellow lines to give the suggestion of hills, and I was away and running. I’ve placed the horizon on around the lower 1/3rd line, as I want to give plenty of room for the gradient-filled sky. I’ve drawn some masking fluid over some white and pink lines toward the bottom, which I imagine will be abstract representations of a busy road at night.
After the masking fluid dried I wend to work on the foreground. Lots of big brush strokes here, plenty of deep purples, browns and blues on a hill in shadow, while the background hills are lit by the setting sun – have I gone impasto too soon on these hills? I hope not, but time will tell. Some careless light strokes in the sky with the idea of developing cirrus clouds, but it’s not grabbing me yet. I do like the feel of where this painting is going overall.
Lots of layers, developing the bones of the painting into something I feel is finished, or nearly so. The headlights/tail lights revealed by the masking fluid didn’t work, they were too stark in the context of the rest of the painting, so I’ve just filled the area in with blue. I’ve added the moon instead as an area of secondary interest, keeping it hazy and ill-defined to prevent it being the main focal point – I want the background of the landscape to provide that.
Speaking of blue, it feels like there’s too much of it. The background hills aren’t really grabbing the eye in the way I want them too either…
The moon is even more hazy and a little dimmer, the background hills are brighter – especially the green area, there’s more pink in the sky, the large shadowed hill is darker with less blue and more highlights, and what I first envisaged as a road is now a track with a solitary shadowed figure walking toward the light.
It no longer feels like a sunset to me, rather I’m imagining more as a newly born day being revealed just around the corner behind the shadow of the hill.
This is one painting I’m really happy with.
