Shuksan Study 5

I kept asking myself “why not” through this painting and trying subtle differences from all the other studies.

For this fifth study I had some basic ideas of what I wanted to achieve.

• A change to the composition to improve my goal of depicting grand scale
• Colors similar to the photo but edited for better effect
• Simplicity
• Use the previous study to learn from
• Simplify the shapes more, don’t work so hard on the details
• Softer edges
• Try a more vertical canvas

After gessoing a few squares there was a bit of paper left over that had an extreme ratio (4×6). Well, more extreme than the previous studies. And I wanted to go vertical with this one so I asked “why not use this one”, and used it.

I liked how it turned out.

I kept thinking of the mountain as this huge giant leaning towards the tiny little building on a tectonic-ally slow course to eventually devour the building and the rest of the landscape. I even adjusted the drawing of the mountain a lot to have it lean a bit towards the building, “why not”.

I also adjusted all the colors by adding transparent earth orange to all of them in an attempt to unify the whole composition in to this muted ominous tone.

What I can improve for the next painting.

• I don’t need to paint the foreground trees like a whole bunch of vertical strokes. Figure out a way to generalize this texture.
• Use a bigger brush on the clouds and don’t be afraid to blur them out with a large soft brush more.

Here is what I like about this study

• The composition is nice
• The shape of the mountain
• The glow around the building
• The height of the coulds
• The colors in the whole painting

Hmm… this one may survive beyond just a study.