Still Amazed (Oil Bar Painting Day 5)

Still Amazed (Oil Bar Painting Day 5)
Originally uploaded by randubnick

Here is the oil bar painting I have been working on as it looked today, which is day 5. I am trying to paint an amazing sunset that I saw last summer from Obear Park here in Beverly, MA. I took photos of the sunset in August, and I am one of them as inspiration and as a reference as I paint. (The photo is posted on this site as well.) This morning I kept going with the basic layout of the canvas, concentrating on perspective. I started by taking out a ruler and measuring some shapes on the photo (printed out from the computer) and comparing the relative measures to the canvas. Then I took a triangle and pencil and drew lines on the computer print-out of the photo to get a better handle on the perspective, especially the direction of the rays of light above the cloud formation. Then I took a white oil bar and drew similar lines on the canvas, drawing right over the painting, and also drew white lines indicating changes to some of the other shapes. Then I painted in the revised shapes, worrying more about value than color, and covering up my white guide lines as a worked. There is no point worrying about the details before I have everything in the right place. I have more work to do but I needed to stop, not only because I ran out of time today (which I did), but also because I want some of the darker paint to dry before I add lighter colors to the canvas.