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Finishing My Acrylic Complementary Study

I'm rereading Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting, as I've decided that I really miss painting landscapes, especially in plein air, but the reason I stopped doing it was because I wasn't happy with my results and I wasn't making progress (ugh, watercolors!). Carlson's book is  DENSE. I gave up highlighting it because almost every paragraph would need a highlight, but I am typing up notes as I read, with the hopes of eventually creating a cheat sheet for myself. 

One of the first lessons he writes about is his "theory of angles," where, for an average landscape, the sky, ground, trees, and mountains have certain relative values. Thinking about the six studies I just completed, I realized that I had arbitrarily assigned the sky a mid value, to make the house more the focal point, but according to Carlson, the sky should be the lightest value of the natural objects. Oops. So I redid the value study, using his theory. I kind of like it. Looks more "real." And it uses four values instead of three. I created this in ProCreate on my iPad, and I even created a grayscale palette to use for future studies. Finally learning how to use my tools!


Next I used this new value study to paint three more complementary studies. I'm really pleased with these three new studies as I learned so much.  I think Carlson is onto something! The relative values really feel more natural and true to the scene. However...

The study on the left was painted as blue dominant with an orange under layer. I think this one is my favorite of the bunch (or at least tied with the blue dominant/gray mother color study). The orange glow from the under layer is pervasive throughout the painting and brings a cohesiveness to it that I like. This would be a great method for plein air painting and I look forward to trying it. I'd probably lighten the orange under layer just a tad next time.

The middle study was done the same way but with a blue under layer. This was supposed to be an orange dominant painting. The blue under layer dominated everything and was not easy to overcome...even using titanium white. Unless I was painting a night or stormy scene, I don't think I'd use this blue again (and it wasn't even on the paper full strength). For example, it's almost hard to believe, but the sky was painted using only titanium white.

For the study on the right, I used a gray mother color with orange as the dominant to see the difference compared to the previous blue study, I'm not as happy with the color on this one; I think the mother color worked better with the blue study, but it does have a cohesiveness I like. This, too, would be a great plein air method to ensure a painting that hangs together without worry. And I moved the horizon line higher. While reading Carlson, he talks about the "idea" of the painting, what you want to emphasize. For me, this scene was always about the field. In my photo, it's lit and glowing, and it's what attracted me in the first place...not the barn, which I've made the focal in all of the paintings. However, man-made objects will always trump natural, just like humans will trump objects. So I think it's fine that the building is the focal...I just want the field to be more interesting. 

So that leads me to my next study, should I feel so inclined. (Not sure at the moment.) The field in my photo is a beautiful golden yellow, and since it was early morning, the yellow has beautiful white highlights on it. None of these complementary studies, done in phthalocyanine blue and pyrrole orange, really capture the feel of those fields. I did this on purpose, so that I would paint and enjoy the process instead of paint trying to make a "good" painting. 

But this color selection is something I struggle with a lot. Am I making a cohesive painting that relies on color theory? Or am I making a painting that captures the essence of the local color? Or do I need to figure out how to do both? If the fields are golden, and the fields are what attracted me to this scene, then it makes sense that my color selection start with a golden yellow. If I'm doing a complementary study, then my next selection would probably be an ultramarine violet. And it makes sense that I give this a try. I think I'd add a few other colors in for variety, but I'd still work within a complementary scheme. Sigh. I guess this is what it means to work in series, and I am learning so much, but I'm getting tired of painting this barn!

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