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Feb222016

Chinaman’s Revenge

A few months back, I had painted this picture of Chinaman’s Bluff.
I have never loved it, so I painted over it with burnt sienna,and tried to make something better out of it. This is the result.
Chinaman's Bluff Oil Painting
I am happy with it, this time. First of all, I re-thought the composition, since it was really poor. This time I did not slavishly follow the photo reference, but used others as well to help me make up the final image.
Then, I used a gamut mask of my hand painted color wheel to get the main colors. The shape is a triangle with one vertex on the brightest yellow, and the other two respectively on the second mostly gray blue ad purple (shown below)
Gamut Mask for Chinaman's Bluff
The photo is a bit more orange than the actual painting, which tends a bit more towards green compared to it.
Here are some passages of the painting:
Chinaman's Revenge WIP 1
Chinaman's Revenge WIP 2

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Oct032015

Chinaman’s Bluff

Chinaman's Bluff Oil Painting

I finally got enough time to complete this painting. After having done all those preparatory studies, I really had to reward the photo with a complete piece.
I can’t say I am totally satisfied, but it’s a step forward. It’s still lacking variety in the brush shapes, as well as enough detail (I worked basically wet on wet). The middle distance cliff has been a pain much like in the studies, and I couldn’t get it the way I wanted. I also failed in capturing enough darkness and depth in the nearer water, as it looks a bit fake, but I guess it will be for next one.

My palette was: Titanium White, Nickel Azo Yellow (I still hadn’t got my cadmium yellow light), Venetian Red, Burnt Umber, Ultramarine, Primary Cyan, Yellow Ochre. I used a big #12 bristle Filtbert, a couple of smaller #4 ones, and a tiny synthetic #2 for the smaller strokes.

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