Reference Photo for Pink Sky Pink Ocean with Strong Posterizing Effect

Reference Photo for Pink Sky Pink Ocean with Strong Posterizing Effect
Originally uploaded by randubnick

I didn't have a chance to paint today, but I am posting the reference photo that I mentioned in yesterday's post. This image began as a photo that I took at twilight in Beverly's Lynch Park, and I have been using it as a reference as I paint. I am not trying to create an exact copy of the photo, but what I am trying to capture is the play of colors on the water and in the sky. The similarity of the values and hues at twilight makes this a challenging painting despite the simplicity of the composition. Now that I have the general composition roughed in, I am paying closer attention to the shapes and colors in the photo so as to understand what the light is doing on the water and in the sky. I was already working from a lightly posterized photograph, but because the colors and subtle shapes are hard to discriminate in the photo, yesterday I used Painter software to create a version of the photo that is posterized with a strong effect. (Posterizing simplifies shapes and strengthens the demarcations between colors.) I played around with the posterizing levels to get a version with more visible demarcations but without distorting the color. (When I was younger, when I was drawing I used to throw my eyes in and out of focus at will to see the general patterns of colors and shapes. I am long past being able to do that now, but using a posterized photo helps me in similar ways.) As a bonus, the posterized reference photos can be interesting in their own right, and sometimes I even include them in art shows.