Colourful Sky

This was based on a photo of the Aurora Borealis where the lights were all in green.  I didn’t manage to get the greens right and the sky looks more like it’s made of clouds of intergalactic matter than of Northern Lights.  So this one will just be called Colourful Sky and I’ll save up Aurora Borealis and Northern Lights until I capture them properly.

Today’s colours were French ultramarine, Prussian blue (the answer to a University Challenge question last night), light red, quinacridone magenta, cadmium yellow and titanium white (only for the stars).  No raw sienna or burnt umber today.  Instead I managed to get some decent earthy colours in the foreground by mixing three primaries.

And I’m happy with the result.  Things didn’t go according to plan in a couple of places but in both cases I was happy with how it all turned out.  I’ve already mentioned how the sky didn’t look like the Northern Lights – I’m happy with how it turned out though.  The other problem was that the sky was supposed to gone further down the page with some cadmium yellow and light red colours at the bottom.  Instead, there was a sharp line in the sky that looked like a horizon.  So I went over that line again with some light red and created a hill in the background that looks really good.  And I still have some quite bright cadmium yellow in places contrasting with the trees.

And compositionally, I think this worked out well.  The midpoint of the foreground trees is about 2/3rds of the way from left to right and 2/3rds of the way down, so lies on one of the four hotspots.  And both the foreground (sloping up from left to right) and whatever it is in the sky (sloping down from left to right) guide the eye to that point.  All by the book, not that any of this was deliberate.

This one is framed and up for sale.  I’m not feeling the imposter syndrome today.