Evening Fields

I had fun doing the painting today. There were no 1.5 hour mark frustrations which was nice. It's getting better. I worked hard to keep the colors vibrant this time - actually I started doing this post and then went back and played with the hue intensity a little bit.

Here is the reference image:

"Mist over moorland near Grossweil Germany" by miquitos

The ugly under-layer:

Mmm. Burgundy.

Foreground FIRST. I can be trained.

How serene.

Getting more complex background elements figured out, changing the colors:

A wild house appears!

Then I added gradients, more details:

Hooray!

At this point I thought I was done. I uploaded everything to flickr and then was looking at it... and it felt so flat. And desaturated. Not bad, but there was no... awesome. (Is that a technical term? It needs more cowbell!) So I opened it back up and played with the intensity. I think I like it better this way:

Brighter.

It's a really subtle change, but I think it makes the image pop more. When you glance at each, the bottom one is more striking. At least that is what I think. Like I said in a recent post, I think the difference between a good drawing and a great drawing is really subtle. (Actually the easy way to make a good drawing a great drawing is to put an explosion in it, but don't tell anyone, it's a trade secret.)

So overall I'm happy with how it came out. I feel like I'm improving.

Not art related, but I can't stop listening to this song, I've been listening to it practically on loop for the last 4 hours or so. I originally heard it in the incredible Assassin's Creed Revelations trailer, but here is the official video for it. The music video is weird but the song is fantastic.