Lindy C Severns Demos Broken Sky, Broken Color

MY PHOTO REFERENCE FOR "BROKEN SKY OVER BLUE MOUNTAIN" WOULDN'T WIN ANY AWARDS, BUT IT SERVED.

I don't normally show my photo references because I usually spend so much time on location and also combine so many photos to produce a painting that saying "I used this one" doesn't make sense. In this case, Jim and I drove to the opposite side of the scenic loop we live within, about 70 miles roundtrip, three times.  The third time, we parked for an hour and watched the clouds shadow the mountain. Blue is such a massive chunk in the Davis Mountain landscape, it could easily be rendered boring, and I didn't want that for my local mountain. What I wanted was to capture the complex shadows that so often cover the mountain on cloudy days. That, I watched and noted as we parked there. But I like to make my landscapes true to the actual terrain, and this photo panorama gave me my map. It also mapped a pattern of value and color that I dramatized in my painting. That's why photos are references, not something an artist needs to copy!  (And yes, I went a little blind squinting for the details in this, but I did blow my photos up. I printed four shots on letter-sized photo paper then taped them together for my panoramic view here.

 
I almost always lightly indicate my compostion then paint the sky rather completely. This gives me my color family and in this case, my value range. Here I've used the side of my pastels to block in clouds and blue patches of sky. The direction of the strokes varies to give a sense of movement to the sky.

As I keep working on the sky, I add light layers of half a dozen or more colors to what I've got.  When I have shape and movement in the sky and pleasing color, I take a very soft white pastel and lightly hatch it over a four or five square inch section of the sky, stroking it over all existing colors. Using my fingers, I then heavily blend this area. I repeat this glazing across most of the sky, using my lightest white tones (grays, lilacs, blues and peaches) as blending tools by crosshatching with them, then blending with my fingers. It's an unconventional technique, and it takes time, but the result is a multi-layered sky that you can see through in places. CAUTION: once you start glazing with your light valued colors, you can't go back and add darks or you'll muddy your pastel irrevocably. Lay in your darks, then adjust them as needed.
TIP: When blending, I use my fingers as if they are brushes, which keeps the motion of my pastel strokes alive. Clouds aren't all the same. Neither should your strokes be, whether from a brush, a stick of pigment or your bare fingers. Imagine you're flying through those clouds and see which way they part for you.

 
With the sky in an at least possibly finished state, I head to my photo references and draw in the mountain. A lot of folks see this mountain every day. I don't want to add bumps and ravines where none exist.

I do selectively choose which terrain features to emphasize. In this case, I have dark canyons pointing down to the outcropping of lava in the foreground because that will be my focal point. I use two dark colors (any colors)  to do this drawing. That allows me to indicate movement and flow better than one would. ("Movement? " you ask, "But it's a mountain!" I reply, "A volcanic mountain. Trust me, there's flow and movement there if you look hard enough.")


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Using the ultramarine blue and burnt sienna guidelines of the terrain I drew in, I chose a caput mortuum and a sage green, both medium dark values, to move up a level in the landscape. I don't cover what I've already got, I sketch around and through it. Movement, movement, movement. The broken patches of color I use to indicate rises and depressions in the mountain are pulled from the same color families I used in my sky. You can even toss in a few splashes of pure blue because the sky color will reflect onto the mountain, even on a cloudy day.

TIP: Notice the varied strokes here. Without knowing what this painting is about, you can imagine the rises and dips in terrain just from the varied directions of the strokes and from the warm caput vs the receding cool green.

 
Imagine pouring a pitcher of water onto this mountain top. Much of it would trickle into the already myriad cracks and crevasses indicated. But most of it would flow toward the bump in the middle of the painting, the one with the burnt sienna patch on the side and the line of green running below it.

That's where I want the viewer's eye to travel. That's my focal point.
Even the green of the softly rolling hills below the rocky mountain head thataway.
That's what composition can do for you.
(Did you notice that the dramatically action-packed clouds' potential for dropping rain also emphasize the line of sight to the focal point? You've got to think this out ahead of time. Happy accidents happen all the time in art.  Few happy accidents happen in terms of complex composition. )

 
Local color is added in small strips and patches of broken color rather massed. Adding color in small doses keeps things from being monotonous and allows me to keep my strokes moving in different directions.


 

 
By adding layer over layer with short strokes that move with the terrain's features and disconnected bits of color I grow a mountain that isn't flat and dreary, despite the cloudy day. The broken color lets the viewer fill in the blanks and put the painting together. More interesting than the solid tones of the photo!