As Martin Weekly set up his painting, I stood in the shade of the juniper, took photos, and just listened and watched. As a Questioner, I bit back many questions, and waited for him to either talk to himself or to address me directly. He shared a tremendous amount of experience and information, which I wrote down when he was finished for the afternoon.
The second roughed in sketch.
Blocking in begins.
There is great comfort in knowing that even the work of a master begins looking scribbly and worrisome.
See those bright orange dots? That is the way Marty checks his values (the darks and lights) because orange is a strong middle value. He can compare any color to see if it is darker or lighter, because a painting needs all the different darks and lights to be good.
This is the scene we were viewing, but of course our eyes take in so much more when standing on location than can be captured by a camera lens.
Marty sees colors differently than I do.
We joked about how paintings look so dreadful in the beginning stages. I always say, “Best viewed from the back of a fast horse”, and he said, “Might look good at midnight with the lights out while wearing sunglasses”.
To the right side of the scene is a weirdly shaped juniper tree and the Honeymoon Cabin. I wondered if he would include those 2 signature items that tell exactly where we are.
It was time for sky so the top of the peaks could be defined. Marty uses a different color of blue than I do for skies, and I thought it was perfect! Why haven’t all the various instructors I’ve had ever mentioned Cobalt blue for skies?? Everyone else swears by Phthalo or Cerulean blue!
We talked about the weird juniper, and Marty thought about it. He decided to not have any trees shooting up above the line of the peaks. This was a concept I never considered; I thought if you made the trees too short, the perspective would look wrong. Not so when Marty does it!
