Morning Light

Morning Light

24 x 30

As readers of this blog know, I am drawn to transitional times of day as the subject of my landscape paintings. For the most part, the evening hours have been my favorite subject. I love those brief moments when the day surrenders to the night. Although I walk at all times of the day, evening walks have always been my favorite. For the last four months though, I've been walking around dawn each day. I have to say, this time has inspired a new appreciation for the morning twilight hour.

This painting is based on a field about a mile from our property. The foreground shadow is mysteriously transparent, something which doesn't really show very well in the photograph. I've included a couple of details. You can get a larger view by clicking on them.

I used many many glazes on the foreground, creating suggestions of form within the shadows by subtle shifts in value and temperature. The road was laid in with thin opaque paint and then glazed over with the foreground glazes to bring it together and keep the value relationships correct. The lightstruck areas were created with thicker, lighter opaque paint.




The trees were laid in with several layers of transparent paint, then form was created with passages of velaturas and glaze impasto passages. Dry paint was dragged over some areas, and in some places the underpainting was left undisturbed.



The sky was painted with several layers of opaque paint and scumbled heavily in some areas. Scumbles were pulled over the trees in the distance to create atmosphere and the illusion of distance.