My Travel Paintings - Columbia River Gorge Crown Point
A View of the Columbia River and Hillsides at Crown Point Vista House. A view captured while on a trip to Oregon and Washington to hike and explore a national park and nearby places I love seeing while in this area. Here I was walking around and exploring the views around the Crown Point Vista House that one Thursday morning. While the thin layer of low clouds and fog didn't allow for a crisp capture of images across this amazing, beautiful and iconic view of the Gorge and river valley, I was able to post process this photo here. What a morning it was! That's the story behind this image I posted here on Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/14723335@N05/36597031882).
Now for the digital painting...the whole of this image was I felt a chance to practice more with one of Kyle's ink style brushes and using broader strokes, while adjusting hues and tones to capture a sense of depth. At first, I was somewhat intimidated by the forest of trees, even erasing a few starts as I didn't seem to capture that feel of forest on sees from overlooks along the Columbia River Gorge. Then I recalled words from a painter friend and videos of Bob Ross and tried again. Voici! I then methodically painted area after area, contrasting as best I could for that visual effect of depth. I also adjusted the brush styles from normal to combined to intermingle colors like one can with a real brush. That came in handy with the grassy meadows, river waters and mountainsides. I found doing that mixing of colors also helped with some imagined clouds, but I first focused on getting certain areas darker or lighter. The darker shade of the skies wasn't planned as I'd been thinking of a sunrise but then turned the day around and went with a sunset and facing east. I felt the darker skies would not only accentuate the clouds, but also draw the eyes back to the areas still caught in sunlight.
In the right foreground of the painting, you'll find that stick figure image of me "hiking" with my Cubbies hat, loving my time exploring the Gorge area once again :-)
My Travel Paintings - Columbia River Gorge Crown Point
A View of the Columbia River and Hillsides at Crown Point Vista House. A view captured while on a trip to Oregon and Washington to hike and explore a national park and nearby places I love seeing while in this area. Here I was walking around and exploring the views around the Crown Point Vista House that one Thursday morning. While the thin layer of low clouds and fog didn't allow for a crisp capture of images across this amazing, beautiful and iconic view of the Gorge and river valley, I was able to post process this photo here. What a morning it was! That's the story behind this image I posted here on Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/14723335@N05/36597031882).
Now for the digital painting...the whole of this image was I felt a chance to practice more with one of Kyle's ink style brushes and using broader strokes, while adjusting hues and tones to capture a sense of depth. At first, I was somewhat intimidated by the forest of trees, even erasing a few starts as I didn't seem to capture that feel of forest on sees from overlooks along the Columbia River Gorge. Then I recalled words from a painter friend and videos of Bob Ross and tried again. Voici! I then methodically painted area after area, contrasting as best I could for that visual effect of depth. I also adjusted the brush styles from normal to combined to intermingle colors like one can with a real brush. That came in handy with the grassy meadows, river waters and mountainsides. I found doing that mixing of colors also helped with some imagined clouds, but I first focused on getting certain areas darker or lighter. The darker shade of the skies wasn't planned as I'd been thinking of a sunrise but then turned the day around and went with a sunset and facing east. I felt the darker skies would not only accentuate the clouds, but also draw the eyes back to the areas still caught in sunlight.
In the right foreground of the painting, you'll find that stick figure image of me "hiking" with my Cubbies hat, loving my time exploring the Gorge area once again :-)