THE STORY BEHIND THIS PAINTING by TOM BROWN

“LAST LIGHT”
8x10 oil on board
$150, Click here.

In yesterday’s post I discussed how to become a better painter. You might find this helpful too: the way my preliminary sketch (shown below) evolved for today’s painting.

   When I spotted this scene I pulled over and did a quick sketch on a scrap of cardboard. And without thinking carefully about it yet, I had included much more of the landscape than necessary.

   Then I paused for a moment to analyze what was most important. Where was the true heart of the subject? And I realized that all I needed was a small part of the scene. The part that captured the golden sunlight washing across treetops while the entire foreground was in shadow.

   I cropped and re-cropped it until I had excluded all unnecessary information. What remained is the true heart and soul of the subject.

   At that point I added a few more strokes indicating the lighting and values.

   On the back of my sketch I made written notes about the colors and light, the value structure, and what I had found most eye-catching at the moment.

   In the studio I used those notes to create this finished painting of the final rays of sunlight washing across the treetops on Laguna Canyon Road in late afternoon.

   My point is this: without the initial exploratory sketch I may have included too much of the overall scene, and lost the impact of the light on the treetops and distant hills.

   But by being willing to take chances, make changes in my initial sketch and explore other possibilities for cropping I was able to come up with a much stronger composition than I had started with. As I said in yesterday’s post, “BE BOLD … be willing to fail.”

   HAPPY PAINTING!
tombrownstudio@gmail.com