Early morning

For the last couple of weeks I have been busy with a commissioned work based on the Red Hills (refer to my previous post listed here) near De Rust in the Western Cape. My plan was to do the same painting with better sky and clouds and a better composition of the mountains. I am busy working through a course of Johannes Vloothuis entitled The Essentials of Painting Mountains and I incorporated what I learned form this course into the painting. But, as I was busy with the landscape I suddenly realized that the hills are quite dark and when I added colour to the hills, that it looks like sunshine hitting it straight on. So the painting turned out as shown below. Rather unexpected, but quite nice. When looking at the painting I get the feeling of being in the Little Karoo early in the morning. I can hear the farm and the sounds through the early morning air. The air is quite chilly and just at that moment the sun breaks the horizon and hits the top of the hills. I feel like I can walk around in this painting and really be there.

The things that works in this painting are the sky, the clouds (to some degree) and the composition of the hill within the photo. I also managed in incorporate some interesting features into the field at the bottom center of the painting. As I look at the painting and sit back to savor my coffee, it tastes really good. The outcome was different to what I expected, but quite satisfying.

I encourage you to click on the image to see a larger version of the painting. The colour is better in the bigger image.

Early morning on the red hills