Evening walk

[Michaelshane]

I snapped the photo yesterday during my walk.Did the painting this morning about an hour and a half.Is the road too purple?

[pointy]

I love the purple road, its exactly what I would have doneif I were to add anything (and it already looks great) maybe a few of the oranges and browns from the right side of the road over in the grasses on the bottom left just to harmonise the colours a little more...and maybe 'drape' some long blades of grass over the road surface, the edge looks a little even right now...the sky is really good...

[Michaelshane]

Thanks,I see what you mean.

[allydoodle]

Excellent advice from pointy, harmonize using the oranges and make the grass on the left look less manicured.

One other thing for future paintings, take a look at the composition, specifically the way the road is designed off the right side of the page. Often times it works very well to have the road/path/river (whatever) be a different 'size' from the corner to where the outside edges of the path start. Hard to explain in words, so I tried to do a pathetic paint mock up to show you what I mean. The portions with the "x" indicate the areas where you don't want the two spaces to be "equal". In order to do that you need to change the shape of the road a bit. Again, this is for future paintings, doing some thumbnail sketches to work out the basic composition will help you not have to rework a finished painting. Nothing is an absolute rule, there are just some design elements that seem to work very well when used in compositions, and this particular approach always seems to make a painting look less static. I also put a bit of a curve on the left side of the road, you have it going pretty straight up and I thought it might look nice with a softer line. Again, what you have isn't wrong, just a different approach.

This really is done very well, Your sky is fantastic, and I love the purple road, I'd have done the same thing!




You could also make the road look like this, which is truer to your original composition and will probably work better:

[dobber]

I agree with the grass issue. Excellent advice from Allydoodle, thanks for the composition lesson.

[camrock06]

This painting is beautiful and inspiring to me.

[norskgal]

Your sky is perfect! Love the purple road ... and yellow stripe works great. Soft horizon with bush on left to keeps eye in painting. Did you plan this? Foliage in front, left is also well done. But the sky and land seem to meet horizontally right in the middle of the composition. That said, if it were my painting, I wouldn't be able to bring myself to crop off any of that beautiful sky!

What paper and sticks did you use?

[jackiesimmonds]

While on the subject of composition.........you have 50% sky and 50% road.
In terms of design of the shapes within the rectangle,this is generally considered undesirable.

Thereis a good reason for this. You want the viewer to know what appealed to you most. Sky, or land? Impossible to know right now. Here are options for you to consider.
Personally, although I quite like the one with the road as the more important part, in general, I think I would quickly grow bored with a picture of tarmac. Even if it is a pretty purple. Whereas I would never grow bored of that beautiful sky.







Incidentally, if you turn your pic upside down, you stop seeing "sky and road" and hopefully will see how strong the composition becomes, with lovely echoing curves, the ones in the sky going in the opposite direction to those below. Lovely.

[klamidon]

I love the purple tones in this. The only thing that is bothering me are the yellow stripes, I would like to see them more orange than yellow, as they are now, they fight with the purple of the road. I love the composition of making the sky the focus.

[pequan]

I think your painting is perfect! very eye appealing. Love the way the road fades out, the grass is trimmed from the cars whizzing by........ if it were me I wouldn't touch a thing..............

[jackiesimmonds]

Michael?

[allydoodle]

Excellent Jackie, I think your suggestion works even better, the road gets cropped to a better proportion, and the sky becomes the star, which it is. I knew I was missing something obvious..... That sky is fantastic!