Mini color study, 3×4 oil on paper

Today’s thumbnail and mini painting are based on a photo from our trip to Zion National Park. It was full of beautiful fall color so that’s the feeling I wanted to capture with my palette. In my value thumbnail, I decided to use the little shrubby plants in the large foreground to help lead the eye toward the focal area — the spot of bright color in the distance at the end of the path. They’re joined together and form a zig zag from the lower right up and over toward this bright spot.

Reference photo

Value thumbnail of simple shapes with some directional notes to lead the eye

My mini painting study converted to black and white to check values

I did a couple of things to help nudge myself away from making the lights too dark:

• moved the 3×4 cut pieces of canvas paper from the brown masonite panel I’ve been using for the last several months to a white foam board
• mixed the dark values then immediately mixed the lightest value (the sky) to set the working range I was shooting for
• when I thought I was finished, held up a piece of red acetate to my study which revealed that the foreground area was too dark and needed to be lightened

These steps seem to have helped quite a bit — when I did the black and white conversion test in Photoshop I was happy with what.

I’m also using these mini paintings as an opportunity to quickly try out a bunch of different underpainting colors to see how they influence the overall mood. Today’s was toned with transparent earth red.

3×4 pieces of canvas paper toned with a variety of colors in preparation of the mini studies