Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Sunrise on Pike's Peak (Digital Painting Reference)



This is a digitally altered* version of the photo I posted here yesterday. I took the original photo in the fall of 2005 from the spare bedroom of my friends' house in Colorado Springs.  The sunrise on the mountains was beautiful, and so I took the photo even though some trees were in the way. I recently decided to make this into a painting reference so I could paint that sunrise.  So I opened the image in Painter and got to work drawing over the trees and branches with digital chalk, matching the nearest color.  This took quite a while.  The colors of the sky and the mountain tops are as accurate as I could manage.  I didn't want to include rooftops etc., so I invented the shapes in the foreground, using the gray of one of the rooftops and the burnt orange of the aspen leaves.  This digital image is both photo and invention. I printed out a copy to use as a reference for a painting that combines memory and daydream.  To be continued. . . .
*Major understatement

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