I spent Thursday afternoon painting the mountains -- finally. I finally got up out of the deep forest of Pisgah (I'll go back) to several miles of higher elevation. The first overlook I stopped at, Pounding Mill Overlook, had more than enough vista for more than 180 degrees, to make me happy.
I can't say I'm at all happy with these first two mountain paintings. Painting the mountains is much more difficult that it looks. For my artist friends, it initially looks like a simple gray scale, with lightest in the back to darkest in the front. Wrong-o, I was.
At right is my first painting during this first Blue Ridge plein air session.
As painters know, adding white to a color not only lightens the color, it brightens it. The atmospheric perspective in these mountains is cool and blue-gray. To add to the difficulty, the green in the mountains in the foreground is warm and yellow and also has areas of the cooler, blue-gray-white mist. The light changes every 30 minutes or less.Yikes.
This is how the view from Pounding Mill Overlook changed a couple of hours after I started painting.
This is my second pochade during this plein air session. This time I painted from back to front, instead of foreground to background, and the view I was painting was more to the right of the above photo, as you can see below right.
All that said, it was one of the most exhilarating paintings sessions I've ever had. The temperature was cool, the sun was in my face and I never felt the sunburn I got because of the constant breeze at 4,700 ft. Lots of people came over to say hi and make comments. One man, after seeing my Michigan license plate, said "That's a long way to come to make a painting. " I heard quite a bit of "That's purr-tee. You sure got a touch." I'm not so sure about that, but I'm going back for more.
To the left is the view from Cherry Cove, about a mile south from Pounding Mill Overlook. As you can see, the choices are almost endless!
Check it out: The Blue Ridge Parkway
(My apologies for the weird spacing and formatting in this post. I've tried and tried but can't seem to fix it.)
5 comments:
Glad you're having such a great time!
I love the mistiness of your mountains - are these watercolors? What was your color combination?
These are oils and I'm working with a limited palette: cadmium red, alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow light, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, phalo green and chromatic black, which is only made by Gamblin. Also, I'm playing with Gamblin's three Portland Greys, light, medium and dark to gray down some colors. If I recall, I used cerulean and cad yellow to create these greens because the ultramarine was too cool. I played with a lot of the Portland grays to gray down the color, which I'm not sure is the best approach. You can find this palette and some great techniques and approaches in Kevin Macpherson's latest book, "Landscape Painting Inside and Out." Glad you like them. MS
I recently returned from a week of painting the Blue Ridge Mountains en plein aire... love your work. Nothing like being out there painting these scenes huh?
Thanks Bernie!
Where did you paint? Did you have fall color? Yes, nothing like being there. I miss it.
And, if I may ask, how did you find my blog?
Best,
Marsha
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