Sky Studies

I'm still going on the sky studies from my watercolors in Paris. The skies moved so quickly there, and there was so much that I couldn't capture, that I took a bunch of photos in case I wanted to paint from them as well, but so far, I keep being drawn to work from watercolors I did there instead. I get asked about working from photos a lot, and I would always rather work on site. Skies are easier than anything else for me to get from photos, or at least to abstract from a bit, but it is much more pleasurable for me to work from a sketch where I have already distilled down, in the moment it caught my attention, what it is I want to capture. Plus they sit there brightly on your easel and look at you. Photos are just harder to have to call up on a phone or whatever. So for now, the sky studies I'm dong in oils

are based on either freestanding watercolors or journal sketches from the summer.

This middle piece was a process photo I took partway through today's session. I'll do a bit more work on the top one tomorrow. The bottom one is now finished.

I'm also enjoying the oil on paper experience. It's smaller and more intimate (at least on the scale I'm working -- Frieda Hamm does them enormous), and I can keep the transparent aspects of watercolor (the sun and cloud trail below are simply the paper showing through) while build up with the lusher colors in the places where I want to do that. It feels like the best of both worlds at the moment. Plus these are much faster than the really intricate print I'm laboring away at, so it's nice to have something that's a little more immediate gratification to balance that project.