Painting Grays

In the winter you won’t see as much color in a landscape as in the summer. The sky is muted as well as the reflections on the water… Everything was gray in this scene, but the sunlight dancing on the water was making it so beautiful. I knew I would need to be really careful with the values/tones if I was going to capture that light and overall feeling of the scene.

Seixal, December 13

Some of the tones in this subject were closely related, like the ones of the boat and the distant town (2 and 3). But I still needed to show the difference between them in order to convey the illusion of space. Thus, I managed to limit myself to 6 values (tones) in order to capture the feeling of that afternoon. 1 is the darkest tone and 6 is the lightest.