A loose interpretation of what the world looked like from my couch during sunrise.

This is the result of the second sit at Lake of the Isles. Again it was getting dark. I decided to adjust the colors and save versions of the image along the way. This time I used the “watercolor brush” to set it up and to make it darker in the end. Using watercolor for the set-up was a really good choice because it makes the lake look a bit watery and it works very well to accentuate the contrast with the highlights on the surface of the lake that I did with a more precise brush (forgot which one, I think the round brush). However, I think the watercolor top layer (the very dark blue in the sky and the water) looks a bit too blotchy, maybe a wider size brush could remedy that for next time.

The experience of ending this in the dark made me think back to a time before cellphones and tablets when a friend and I went out to paint at night in the harbor of Kampen (NL). We thought a candle would help us to see our painting while not illuminating the scene and causing our eyes to have to adjust to the dark al the time. Well, we discovered that it was very hard to see in the dark what color paint you put on your brush. Who would’ve thought. But this time, on the tablet, it was incredibly easy to paint because the screen makes it all light up, but not too much that it is intrusive or a hindrance.

After watching a talk by David Hockney, I realized that of course I could do what he does and go paint outside on my tablet. Here is the first one I made. I started before sunset and ended when it was getting pretty dark, so I had to adjust the colors along the way if I wanted to stay true to what I as looking at. This was made on a Samsung galaxy Note Pro tablet, using the Artflow app.