Misty Dawn

Reflection and Analysis

As in my recent painting "Harmony in Blue and Grey - Soft Tides" I chose a very soft lighting for the image.  This image lives form its lighting and is dominated by greys, which are toned by the two complementary colours blue and orange to make the "colourless" painting more interesting and aesthetic. As also I added some textures of traditional brushes in the sunlit areas (top right) to support the painterly feel of the whole image, but only slightly to add some variation to the painting. The soft brush must still outweigh to keep the soft feel.

• Dreamlike atmosphere
• Soft lighting
• "Beautiful Grey"
• Monochrome image with a teinte of orange
• Low value and colour contrast
• Soft transitions from light (top) to dark (bottom)

Painting Process

Used some photos of a seagull beginning its flight I took a while back and cropped them together. The shortly before dusk lighting when I took the photos lights up the wings nicely which inspired me to make this the focal point of the image. 

After layering the birds close to each other I cropped the image to landscape view as it fit the composition better. Now I begun to soften up the background as I wanted to create a very soft painting with the bird furthest to the left hardly visible and the closer they get to the light source (to the top right out side of the picture somewhere), the more visible they become. I therefore also overlayed a gradient from light to dark over the whole image to emphasize the lighting and help unify and further soften up the image.