"Winter Morning Sunrise"
Oil on Canvas
18" x 24"
When in doubt, make it up...sort of! This is one of the many awesome sunrises I get to see when I actually look outside in the morning when I get up to paint. The photo just doesn't do it justice in the least so I decided to try to capture the wonder of it on canvas. As you can see however, an awesome sunrise isn't going to translate all that well with my side fence and barbeque grill in the foreground. I wanted to balance the sky drama with a little something in the foreground albeit a very dark value. I decided to just wing it on my canvas without any reference. I was able to easily place a stream and some brush in the foreground on account there wouldn't be much detail required due to the subdued lighting, however, I wasn't able to pull off a very realistic reflection at first. I went online and did an image search of streams and rivers to observe how low light actually reflects. I didn't find anything too close to what I intended, however, just studying reflections in general gave me enough understanding to pull off the one I made up in my painting.
