Thursday, January 19, 2012

Downhill Junior

This is for Virtual Paintout January, 2012 Colorado challenge. It's oil on 12x16.

This month's Colorado challenge is quite unique: the Google camera was actually attached to a snow mobile, and Google street pictures were taken on ski slopes! I couldn't pass up such a fun opportunity to "ski" virtually while sipping hot tea by my computer! Very cool.

Somewhere not too far from where the ski lift drop-off, I saw this little guy going downhill, in parallel skis! (ref) (as opposed to kiddie wedges we usually see with kids going down the hill) In fact, I think he has better posture than me! In any case, I thought it would make a fun composition, with his bright red jacket, bright snow, shadows from the trees, far away mountain.

Starting with a white canvas, I first painted cold dark trees and the mountain in the background. Sunny snow is white mixed with cadmium yellow. Tree shadows are white with violet grey and blue grey. I used palette knife for the tree trunks, and tree leaves were combinations of burnt sienna, burnt umbre, cadmium yellow, sap green etc. For the kid's jacket I used my left over vermilion, cadmium red, alizarin, ultramarine violet from the strawberries painting I did a few days ago. To make the bottom part of the painting, with the snow, shadows and the kid, less disjointed from upper half, with the trees and mountain, I decided to put in a few rays of sun peeping through from the trees to tie the two parts together.

1 comment:

  1. I liked your "little red boy" very much. colors are just right (I read your explanations with interest). movement also. lovely painting.
    mico

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