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Demonstration 2 (An unconventional exercise in mixing color)

DEMONSTRATION 1 (Below)

The picture was taken on an overcast September morning, from the boat deck of the ferry Kennecott.  We had just left Auke Bay in Juneau and were headed north toward  Haines and Skagway.  The ferries of the Marine Highway System are a wonderful way to see the inside passage.  Lynn Canal is the northern extension of Chatham Straight and was carved by the same glacier in the Wisconsin Ice Age.  There are places where it is nearly 2,000 feet deep and it is home to a rich variety of sea life including Salmon, Halibut, Dungeness Crab, Orcas and Humpback whales.

The sketch is 10.75" x 6.25" and I decided to eliminate some sky and go for a more horizontal format than the photograph.
 

I cut a sheet of 300 pound Kilimanjaro cold press paper to the right dimensions and made a rough sketch similar to the pencil drawing above, but without the shading.

Next I put down some initial washes of Cobalt and French Ultramarine Blues with a touch of Vermillion to gray them down.

The next washes contained more Vermillion in the sky, and French Ultramarine in the water.

I haven't  started to darken the foreground trees or the rocks yet because I'm not finished with the foothills in back of them or the water in front of them.  From past experience I know that if I put in some nice dark green trees now, sure as hell I'll drag the green out into the other areas later and feel really dumb for being so impatient!

The washes on the mountain slopes are varying mixtures of Cobalt and Fr. Ultramarine blues mixed with Burnt Umber and some Burnt Sienna.

This stage looks warmer due to the addition of some more vermillion in the sky, burnt sienna on the low hills, and a mixture of alizarin crimson and permanent magenta where the trees will be.  Red in the trees?  Aren't they supposed to be green?  Yes - but a toned down green.  I under paint them with reds because it tones down the vividness of the greens and gives the final color more interest and complexity when a little of the red shows through.

Now we're back to cool again with the addition of blue washes over the vermillion in sky and darkening the water with a wash of French ultramarine.  Green washes on the lower hills ease the transition from the color of the mountain to the trees in the foreground, which are now dark green.  The under-painting of red shows through and gives the trees a richer color than they would have had I just put green on white paper.  And now we have rocks too!

The painting is in the final stages now, and when I had it on the table in the studio it looked like it might be finished, but seeing it here I can see it needs more work.  I have found that the last hour is usually what makes the painting work, and sometimes the last 5 minutes.

Picasso said, "The painter creates light by adding dark,"  If you compare the painting above with the one four stages earlier near the top of the page you will see what he meant.  In both versions the snow is just white paper with no additional white paint added, and yet the snow looks much brighter and whiter in this stage, merely because of the addition of all the dark areas around it!

Darkening the water will help force the eye up to the snow too, and If I darken the sky above it I can make the snow start to look blinding by comparison.  But that would probably be an example of 'overkill'!

I darkened the lower foothills with washes of vermillion and sap green.  I darkened the mountains by defining the texture of the rocky slopes.  Now the glacier and the ice field on the mountain have such a glare that it's hard to believe they aren't any whiter than they were back in step 1. 

The painting is almost there.  Now I have to live with it a while, and time will tell me what else it needs.

Demonstration 2 (An unconventional exercise in mixing color)

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