This challenge from Karin Jurick's
Different Strokes From Different Folks blog was tough for me! As you can see, the reference photo is colorless.....thus the challenge. Make up the color! How hard can that be? It's farmland and sky! Ahhh, but there are MANY different colors of blue and green and gray. I spent several hours on what I thought would be very straight forward and simple! After painting many, many swatches trying to decide on the right color for the mountains in the background, I reminded myself (as I often do) that I could paint this a billion different ways and just pick a color and start!!! Unfortunately I lapsed back into indecision when I got to the foreground and had to remind myself again! Trial and error and thinking and planning are good , up to a point......then you just have to paint!
The good part of this was that after I decided on the colors, and established the darks and lights, I found myself referring to the photo less and less since it wasn't providing me the color information I needed. It made it very clear just how much I rely on my visual resource!
4"x 12"
acrylic on board
Click on image for larger view.