Up the Ragged Rocks

Reflection and Analysis

For this painting I went for a very texture heavy and sketchy feel to portray the roughness of the scene. 

• Connection between art style and subject matter
• Composition: main subject in verticle line of the rule of thirds

Top Version

The top version uses clear and high saturated colours and still throws off a quite friendly impression of the environment in contrary to the bottom version. 

• High colour contrast and use of complementary colours
• Warm colours dominating

Bottom Version

In the bottom version there is far less colour contrast which lets the whole image merge together as whole far more. It therefore creates more unity. The lower saturated colours and the unhealthy sky colour as well as the now cool colours for the rocks (especially in the shadows) create a much darker atmosphere than the upper image does. The sky seems almost like industrial smoke now and covers the mountains creating a sense of danger in the air.

• Low colour contrast
• Cool colours dominating
• Unity of the image due to a fairly monochrome colour scheme 

Different Alterations

Here are some further colour variations that I created to test different atmosphere and lighting effects.

 Painting Process

This is one of the few paintings I started off without any reference or subject in mind. I just sat down and started with a empty canvas and wanted to see the result. My initial plan after setting the basic composition and colour theme was to use the clouds as sort of lines pointing towards the mountain to strengthen it's importance.

Later on I felt there was too little of a texture in the painting and that it started to come across a bit boring. So I tried to add different kind of textures (through texture brushes in Photoshop (not photos)) and create a more realistic lighting. The clouds were also a bit too much as the mountain was already in the rule of thirds and the only real object to look at. To create more balance I changed the clouds therefore. Finally I adjusted the final colour and lighting in the scene.