Saturday, January 28, 2012

Mingo Flats demo

In the second of a series of Saturday workshop I demonstrated "Mingo Flats Road". First, the students were asked to study the reference photo and see how I manipulated the image to create a better composition.
Here's the reference photo, the sketch and the final pastel created for the step by step demo.
I chose to move the large trees and the house back into the middle ground closer to the background to give room to the mountain and create a sense of the largeness of the mountain.
However, I strayed from the value study of the sketch by making both trees the same value. If I stayed true to the value sketch the tree on the left side of the road would have appeared even further back into the picture plane. And in the value sketch the further back mountain looks as if a storm has darken it with the foreground still in sunlight.
I may have to try this again and I do like the telephone poles - also eliminated from the final piece.
"Mingo Flats Road" 8" x 12" demo on LaCarte sanded paper