The problem with night scenes

Night Watch

I've finished the larger painting of the night scene at Horsethief Butte in the Columbia Gorge. I followed the same process I used for the study, except I did use the projector for the drawing. I had already applied a textured gesso layer to the canvas before I glazed the study and decided it was too much, so I went over it with a second layer of gesso with a scraper, which covered up a lot of the texture, but there's still some of the effect, particularly on the bottom. I'll be playing with it more in the future, but maybe not on landscapes so much. I first painted this one in daylight colors, then turned the lights off with overpainting. That may be the slowest possible way to get a night scene but it really makes a realistic night effect.

It took me a long time to get the colors and values right. The problem with night scenes is, if it's too light, it doesn't look like night, and if it's too dark, then you can't see it when it's hung! I had thought the commission-er was going to be hanging it in a brightly-lit room, so when he told me it was going into their living room, I decided to take it over there and try it in their room light before I glazed it. After some last minute touchups the night before, I decided I was finally happy with it. Fortunately, he was very happy with how it looked in their living room, so I've got it back and am glazing it now.

I made a lot of use of thin color washes—phtalo blue, deep violet, and burnt orange, plus black where I needed it. Maybe someday I'll learn to mix every brushful the right color to begin with, but I do like how layering the washes creates a sort of ambiguous patina that looks like all those colors at the same time, with a kind of a elusive shimmer due to the variations of intensity of every brushstroke. It's easy to do if you give each wash sufficient time to dry (at least a few hours) so there's a minimum of lifting of the previous wash. I did do one wash way too dark, and ended up having to lift most of it off with water and paper towels. That was no fun, scolding myself while I dabbed with crossed fingers.

There are a lot of small textures in this one and I got more practice of working with the brush in one hand and a tissue in the other, ready to dab off any extra paint. I used the same technique as on the first Horsethief painting to get the effect of the sharp-edged basalt rocks—handling the different layers with different brushes and colors.

I've got too many good gorge photos to stop now, so I'm getting ready to start another one—this time of Wankers' Column in Catherine Creek State Park. Not going to do a study, just going to jump right into it.