Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Sugarloaf Mountain - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This is for Virtual Paintout November 2010 challenge, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

This is the Sugarloaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. What attracted me to this scene was the unique shape of the Sugarloaf Mountain, the ocean, the mountains that go farther and farther back in the ocean, the bright sky and people along the path by the ocean.

However, what I was debating was the composition, as it could be too heavy on the right hand side with the mountains. So I made the foreground path more diagonal so to lead the eyes from the right to the left. (This type of arrangement can be seen in some of my prior paintings, like the challenges for Hawaii and Norway.) I put in the wispy clouds also trying to balance out the heavy right hand side. To add in a little more interest, I added in some pure color for the man's backpack and his cap. It also seems like he might be carrying a water bottle in the reference picture, so I added that in as well. (ref photo)

For underpainting, I used a thinned out ultramarine violet oil painting, did a monochromatic value study, since I thought many color in this painting had purple in it, like the sky, mountain and the ocean. The palette included cobalt blue, ultramarine violet, ceruleum, raw and burnt umber, ultramarine blue, madder, sap green, cadmium yellow, Portland grey, white and a tiny touch of vermilion.

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