Sketches, choosing colours

These two sketches helped me choose colours and lines to emphasize in my painting Milford Sound. The first sketch uses a bright blue on top of a dark blue to show the sea. The second sketch uses a bright blue on top of a dulled green to show the colours of the sea. The sky in the second is lighter to emphasize the line of the mountain that falls to the sea.

The top colour chart is for the second sketch which became the colours of my painting Milford Sound.

Milford Sound by Kent Crawford

Mitre Peak is a mountain in the sound that is a very strong national symbol. I was more interested in the meeting of mountain and sea than that icon. I removed photographic details of that  mountain to emphasize that relationship.

Patterns, colour in memory

This is a sunrise on Lyttle Mountain

This image is closer to my memory of a sunrise on the Routeburn Track, New Zealand, than photographs I took on that hike. It is a composite of two photographs. The colours of the foreground came from a photograph exposed at 1/30  of a second. The colour of the background  came from another  photograph exposed at 1/1260 of a second. I think what happens is two glances are joined in my memory. Colour memory is maleable and weak.

The background colours for "Lyttle Mountain" came from this photograph

The foreground colours for "Lyttle Mountain" came from this photograph

This is the completed 18" x 23.5" painting.

 

Patterns, exagerated lines

Through the Trees by Kent Crawford

I photographed a creek running through the trees on the edge of a cut block. When I painted “Through the Trees”, I exaggerated the lines of the photograph to create angular patterns. Those repeating patterns help give the hillside a sense of steepness and movement.

The lines form a repeating pattern of triangles.

Industrial Patterns, logging and fires

Cut Block no. 2 by Kent Crawford

The cut block is an industrial pattern. These paintings show my tree planting work sites. I planted this cut block above Henderson Lake, Vancouver Island, in 1989. It is also an opening or a clearcut. To some it is an eyesore.

Cut Block No.1 by Kent Crawford

We also planted planted forestry blocks that were burned in the Canal Flats Fire. The Canadian photographer, Loraine Gilbert was on that crew. She photographed the landscape near our camp at 27k on the White Swan Main.

Loraine Gilbert's photograph of the Canal Flats Fire

Loraine Gilbert's photograph of the Canal Flats Fire

Patterns in colour

Tangled Garden by J.E.H. MacDonald

When I saw the mountains behind the thimble berries and fireweed that became the subject of my painting Thimble Berries, I remembered the Canadian post impressionist,  J.E.H. MacDonald‘s wall of blue purple behind his garden. I don’t think you can say there was a particular colour or colour combination that  post impressionists used. They took the Impressionists vivid colours and exaggerated them. They shared the idea that colour could have a meaning of its own or your own. I like the idea  that  colour has it’s own life and you respond to it.

Thimble Berries by Kent Crawford

These are the colours for Thimble Berries

 

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