Sunset, Backyard

I was having a bit of trouble coming up with something to draw or sketch today and went looking through my camera roll. I found this picture of the sunset hitting the clouds sometime this past week, and decided to try to capture the bright reds oranges and yellows of them. Clouds are always a fun challenge to paint since they are such a relatively bright value - generally they’re about the same value as the sky itself. So one thing I often do when painting clouds and skies, wether digitally or with traditional mediums, is to keep the value as close to the same as possible - in this case the blues, magentas, reds and oranges are all the same value. I pushed the saturation of the magentas and reds a bit more than the other colors, too. You can see this pretty well by squinting down at the image. everything in the sky blends together, and the only major details you can see are the more sturated magentas and the yellow rim light I put on the clouds after they were painted in. Then I tried to keep the house and fence a middle value (though I should’ve pushed the fence a bit darker), and made sure all the leaves and branches of the trees were quite dark - almost just a silhouette. And then I got tired and called this sketch finished.

-ZR