Leah's sunset landscape

Here is Leah's loosely painted landscape with a dynamic sunset.

 I really like the sunset dynamic color here.

 Here is Leah's photo inspiration.

I lightened the land and combined the two halves. As I've talked about before, the camera will often not give us a true value for the light if the darker section is featured and if the camera picks up the light well, it will often darken the darker parts, sometimes dramatically.







Here is Leah's painting and that of a previous piece inspired by style of artist Lisa Noonis. She'd like to bring this influence to her new painting.

 Here are a few of the strong compositional elements I think that make this photo interesting and that would translate well in a painting. One can paint tightly or loosely as long as one paints with a concept. Here, if I were painting a picture based on this scene, I'd want to capitalize on the naturally occurring diagonals and counter angles as well as the nice sweep of the land as it meets the ocean. All of these dynamic angles are grounded by the horizontals in the ground plane.

I lightened the ground plane from the original photo and kept the value of the sky in a Photoshop comp. I think that the ground still reads a little dark but that can make the sky more dynamic. I could see pushing a little more light and dark and more color into the ground plane.

Here are a few ideas:

1. First, whether Leah places the foreground tree on the left or the right she'll want to think about creating a dynamic shape with the shape of the tree. Above, you'll notice the angles of the tree in the upper right. Notice how the composition feels more like a square here because of the shape of the trees.

Currently in the painting, the branches of the tree on the left all end in roughly the same vertical plane. Even if the tree remains on the left I'd take out most of the branches near the horizon to let more of the sunset come through.

2. Here I'm just indicating where I might play with the angles (spoken of above).

3. And here countering it. Also look at the darks in the sky in the photo. The darkest clouds aren't as dark as even the light parts of the ground plane.

I like the curve of the ocean into the land as in the photo. The water might even reflect the sky.

I like Leah's color. I'd like to see across more of the horizon.