Monday, October 30, 2006

Last light over some random lake


Just mucking around with contrast on this one. Quite like how it turned out.

Another mountain pic

Half-did this a long time ago, didn't like how it was panning out. Tidied it up last night - nothing special, but reasonable...

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Sunburst


Tried to capture the rays of light from behing the cloud on this one. I quite like it in person for its simplicity, but the photo isn't so great... redid the photo (bottom one) after doing a bit more work on the water and the clouds on the left - I like the new photo better so I'm happy now :)



Mountain stream

This is loosely based on an Arizona photo I came across - without the signature peaks. The trees came out a bit lifeless on this one...not sure why, as they seemed quite vibrant as I was laying the pigment on the paper, but I guess sometimes it devolves as it dries :P

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Mountains again

Tried another mountain pic with the intention of working on my depiction of the middle ground. Nothing spectacular or new really - about time that I picked something challenging again I suspect... I think I'll try to find a ref that really excites me - something I really wanna put up on my wall, and try to paint it well enough to end up there :P

Monday, October 23, 2006

Weekend pics




The beach pic is basically finished (not totally satisfied with the foreground - I know this is an area where I have some learning to do). The waterfall (yes it's a waterfall :P) isn't finished, but I need to have a think about how to complete it. It is clearly too empty in the middle of the page...

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Yet another beach pic...

I wanted to try the style of painting rocks I did yesterday, so I decided to apply it to the trusty "beach at first/last light" setting. I liked how the rocks came out, but the dark clouds didn't balance the picture as well as I'd hoped, so I dropped in a tree to make it a bit less lop-sided. Overall I'm very happy with how this turned out :)

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Ashley's Gorge


Well not exactly. This is a semi-faithful reproduction of a painting of some random North-American canyon. I was fasinated by the way the right cliff face was represented, and wanted to try it for myself. I think it's a really effective style, so I'll keep it in mind for future use....

Southern Alps at Sunrise

I'm really pleased with this one. I initially planned to go for quite intricate mountains, but ended going for quite simple representation - virtually the entire painting was done using a mixture of violet and cerulean blue, and the blended tones on the mountains look quite striking on closer inspection :)

Monday, October 16, 2006

"Lake Wanaka" completed


This is a (somewhat romanticised) painting from another of my Wanaka photos, this one looking out across the lake from the beachfront in the evening. I really like how this came out, especially the control of light and shadow, and also how distant the far mountain range feels - previously I would have aimed for more contrast there to make it a clearer focal point, but it wouldn't have felt as real...

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Random bay painting completed

This one looks quite a lot better in person - quite like how it looks in person but not really fussed on it based on this photo...

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

"Lake Wanaka" completed


This is based upon a very similar reference photo to the stormy painting of Lake Wanaka I did a couple of months back...this time I went for a different style with a happier tone. I need to darken up the shadowed face of the distant mountain, but other than that I'm quite happy with how this turned out.


.... darkened it now - this is the new version:

Monday, October 09, 2006

"Wanaka By Night" completed

Played with the colours a bit here to try to give it a twilight-type feel. Semi-successful. Weird how the trees look far more transparent in the photo than in person :S

"Arthur's Pass" completed

Not much to say about this one. My main aim was to make the mountain pass look large and imposing.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Beach painting completed

I've had this sitting half-finished for a while, trying to decide what I should put on the beach. I finally decided the deserted beach itself could become the theme, so I framed it with trees and darkening sand as it moved away from the shoreline.