Painting process | A Remarkable Sunset
When I was in Queenstown last year, I was fascinated by the sunset over the Remarkables. For a few minutes, a band of vivid peach light stretched across the mountains. Meanwhile the shadows turned an almost unnatural cobalt blue and the town below seemed to melt into the trees.
I knew this would make a wonderful painting, if I could convincingly capture the light effect.
I wanted this painting to capture that quiet flash of brilliant last light on a cold autumn evening. It’s created from references, sketches, notes and memories.
Click on the image above to watch the time-lapse of this painting being created
Preliminary sketches and studies
I spent a long time over Christmas studying composition design. So my preliminary work for this painting is quite extensive as I’m putting what I learned into action!
Here I’m working out which part of the panoramic scene to use in my composition. I defined the motive behind the painting, and how I’ll lead the eye through it using the ripples, mountain edges and light strip.
These four pencil sketches helped me establish the value hierarchy. I divided the scene into simple shapes and defined which was the lightest, darkest, and in-between. I chose the bottom left sketch.
I then painted these little value studies to define the value relationships– how light or dark each value is on a scale from 1 to 10.
I then did these two little colour studies, trying to stick closely to the values I'd already come up with.
This final sketch helped me to work out the colour mixes more accurately, especially in the water.
I used this sketch as my reference for the first layers of the final painting.
The painting process
I completely forgot to photograph the painting at the drawing stage (you’ll have to watch the time-lapse if you want to see it!). So, here it is almost entirely blocked in with colour. You can see the burned sienna underpainting peeking through.
Here I’ve started refining the texture of the mountains, trees and water. I mostly painted with layers of short brushstrokes to create a broken, vibrating colour effect.
Here, I had started painting the little building by layering dark blue paint with dark greens to nestle them into the trees. I also started defining the shape of the mountains into 3D masses and warmed up the light on the mountain.
I worked on softening the edges of the top of the mountains to give them a sense of distance and height. I also softened the edge of the band of sunlight on the mountain by bringing flecks of pink, orange and purple down into the surrounding blues.
The buildings in the town are deliberately just an impression, so not to distract from the light on the mountain. I made the tops of a few buildings leading up to the right side of the line of trees a touch lighter to connect from the ripples in the water up to the mountains.
Finished!
"A Remarkable Sunset"
70x50cm, oil on linen.
I love the sense of depth and scale I was able to achieve in this painting, and I had so much fun layering little dabs of colour to create that evening atmosphere.
Details
The top edge of the right most part of the sunlit ridge is deliberately sharper than anywhere else, to draw attention.
This is a close-up of the blues in the mountain. I’ve layered brushstrokes of purples, blues and greens while allowing the orangey underpainting to show through for warmth.
The ripples on the water are doing a lot of work compositionally. They add vertical lines to a scene that is dominated by horizontals. They add interest and perspective to the water. And they lead the viewer’s eye up into the mountains and to the band of light. I played around with keeping them subtle so they don’t distract from the light on the mountain.
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