I finally got the color I want on the last big hill. It took me three tries over three days. My first guess was too dark and I thought it was too blue. The second time I made it lighter and more gray, and that looked good value-wise, but the color just looked like it didn't fit. I puzzled over it last night, and finally decided to take it back to blue, but a warmer blue, almost matching the rear hill on the left side, so mostly pthalo, with a smaller fraction of cobalt. The other thing I did with this pass was reduce the range of values, giving it more aerial perspective by lowering contrast.
I think the reason it took me so long to get a color that looked good was, again, because I'm really inventing these colors—they only resemble the colors in the photo references I have; and those photos, which were taken in different seasons even, as well as different times of day, are all different from each other. It was too big of a leap for my brain to consolidate all that varied information in one pass—I had to circle around it for a while before I realized I was trying too hard to copy the colors from the photos instead of doing what the painting needs. Last night after I finally marked up a photo with these colors, I saw the symmetry I got by having the rear hills on both sides being almost the same hues.
The white lines are there because you can't cover up blue with Pyrole Orange without a LOT of impasto.
If I still like it tomorrow, then I'm done with the hills. Or mostly done. 😊
Almost 92º outside at 3:30pm. At least we had a nice cool night last night.
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