Emerald Sunset Study

"Emerald Sunset Study"
6"x6" Oil on Gessoboard
$120 Unframed
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I had a really tough time with this one. The shophouse is pretty much silhouetted, but I didn't want it to be flat. I really wanted to get the correct shadow colors. In the end I really feel like I did a good job with it, and I love how realistic it looks. One of the toughest parts of it was getting the dark red color correct. Until I used the Photoshop color dropper to make a swatch, I kept making it a dirty dark red. In fact it was a really beautiful fuschia. All by itself it was a crazy pink purple, but in the context of the whole painting it reads as a dark red, which is just fascinating. 

The other color that was giving me a run for my money was the reflection of the sky. Initially it seemed like since the sun was setting, the window should reflect a yellow color as well. But since the sun is coming from behind, the window is reflecting the sky in the opposite direction of the views, which is the blue you find towards the top of the sky during a sunset. Even that blue kept on coming out more muddy - until I used the color picker again. This is a fantastic tool to have in the arsenal! I like to use it to get a truer idea of the color, and then I push or pull it in the way that I whichever way I want to empasize it. In the meantime, it gives me a great jumping off point.