Dawn!
This is the second fantasy illustration in a story telling series. This is the second full illustration I have done in Photoshop and yes, you can say I bit off more than I could chew..

Self critique:

What did I learn?

I need to work on:
-Overall consistency. I think that is true for most digital illustrators because the tools are so varied and there are so many choices.

-Getting better at color mixing, badly, badly needed here, too much black over all!

-Better management of files, organizing, layering, etc

-Push for better lighting

-Getting to know my digital brushes, picking my favorite ones and using them for better overall consistency

-Work more abstractly first, before the form

It was only towards the very end I felt I was finally painting a little in Photoshop. When I first began the color/value lay out on this, looking back on it I should have layed everything out in pure color-not a gray scale layout. Color should have been addressed first, because there is too much black, not enough warms and cools playing off each other. I learned this while painting the small plein aire color sketches in Tahoe (see earlier posts)

Last Day at Eagle Falls, Tahoe
I got up at 4 am to get to Eagle Falls by 6 to see the sun rise. What a morning. I couldn't decide on whether to climb the falls down to Emerald Bay or paint. I did a little of both.

Eagle Falls is one of my favorite places period. Nothing compares to it's beauty, so casual and abundant. No one was there that morning. I decided to paint small, simplify, getting better on using a system of brushstrokes, brights and filberts, getting to know them better and of course being more abstract.

Top upper left was the first and I nailed it.

Top upper right was the second one and I was on a narrow bridge at about 8 when tourists started to stagger in. I do not like people behind me and got real jumpy since this bridge is a very high traffic tourist area. I lost concentration and left.

Bottom left had an incredible example of a wonderful blue reflective light at the big boulder's base. I was intent on capturing that. I was getting tired about now, at 10 am. Decided not to paint anymore. A woman dropped by looking over my shoulder and started talking so much I thought she was going to tell me her life story.

Bottom Right. Then hiked all the way up to Eagle Lake carrying about 15 pounds of paints, water and lunch in high elevation, sweating and panting for breath up broken granite and an incredible path, found this lovely little composition at Eagle Lake. Had to paint it, by then it was 12. Wanted to describe the shadows with blobs of blues using a limited palette.

The Palette:
Greens: Thalo green, Chromium Oxide Green, Hansa yellow (my new favorite yellow. Ugly right out of the tube, but mixes great to get cool highlights in greens as well as wonderful warm neutrals for rock)
Sky: Colbalt turquoise (teal), cerulean blue, tit.white
Rock: Raw Sienna, Hansa yellow (like 2%), black, tit. white, chromium oxide green (like 1%) or cerulean blue (1%)

Small acrylic color sketches on 8 1/2 by 11 canvas paper

This is from Bliss Park which is right before Eagle Falls. I've always wanted to get to Bliss but always ran out of time. It's paradise here, incredibly blue, turquoise water up to blunt rocky cliffs~cliffs small enough that the local teenagers were leaping off the boulders into the icy water. My nine year old daughter took her turn and as a mom, it was hard to watch.

Acrylic on canvas paper. Taken from cell phone.

The last one I did yesterday-a real quickie, as Greg and Sienna were tapping their feet by this time. I hated to leave.

I did not bring a scanner so these are all taken on my cell phone.

This is on the trail of Eagle Falls on the opposite side of the highway across from the Lake. We always mean to follow the trail, exquistely beautiful as well, but my daughter gets caught up here all afternoon. A very popular spot, esp. for children, it's water is icy cold and sports shades of blues to greens. I love it here. I really wrestled with this composition because my weakness is simplifying anything. I got a lot more loose on the right side of the painting, then looked up to see Greg and Sienna wanting to leave.

I am on vacation in Lake Tahoe. My very favorite place in all the world is Eagle Falls on the lake side of the highway. This is the first acrylic painting in a long time. This is actually the setting which has inspired the home of LeoPardine. Very limited pallette, on canvas paper.