Still Amazed as the Sun Set (Posterized)

Still Amazed as the Sun Set (Posterized)
Originally uploaded by randubnick

It's time to start another painting. (I have a show coming up in May.) I have been thinking about a series of photographs that I took last August from Obear Park, here in Beverly. It is a little unusual to find a location around here where can get a view of the western sky over the water. One night last August, the sky was amazing, and I shot a series of photos as the sun was setting. Today I picked this one out to use as reference for my next painting. But I needed to make some adjustments. First, I used iPhoto to light the shadows enough so some of the houses along the shore would be visible, because I want to include them in the painting. Then I used Painter to posterize the image. I posterized the houses with a high effect, but the sky and the water are posterized just enough to make the shapes and colors more obvious. Then I cropped the image for a square format because the all the paintings for this show are going to be 20 inches by 20 inches. So here is my reference photo. Nothing to do now but start painting.