A Big Sunset

Winter Sunset

Last week I was working inside for a few stormy days. I've had a big figure study sitting on my easel for about a year that I finally gave up on, and decided to see if I could have fun painting a big cloud painting on it instead. The reference was a photograph I got early last winter of a particularly colorful sunset, taken from here in my yard.

I did have a lot of fun painting it, because thanks to my back-yard cloud painting this summer I was able to keep it loose and relaxed. I worked on it for three days and spent a fair part of that time working out the landscape at the bottom. I wanted to have it create a setting for the view without competing or conflicting with it. This was the most vibrantly colored sunset I've ever painted, and it was fun working out how to get the right colors. When looking at the darks of the clouds in the photograph, I at first thought they had violet in them, but when I carefully analyzed them, I found out I could most closely match them with a mix of Napthol red and medium gray. That was a surprise. I never used grays much before I started doing clouds this year. Turns out they're pretty useful.

I spent most of this last weekend expanding and improving my Etsy shop. I've put up almost all my available works, from my small matted landscapes to my big ink abstracts. For now I'm focusing on my paintings, and I'll be adding more as I complete more works and figure out how I want to ship the large stretched canvases that I have. I'm not doing much with glass for now, but as I do more of the mobiles this winter, those will go up there too.