Painting a Sunset on Location

Want to have some fun painting?   Find a good spot to paint your sunset.   Get there about a half hour ahead of time.    Bring a   16×20 canvas or smaller.   Then load your palette with colors you would use in a sunset.  I usually use Cobalt Blue, Cereleun Blue, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Yellow, and Titanium White.  

When the sunset starts to develop,  mix a few of these colors as close as you can for what you see.   I use a larger filbert brush for the darker blues and then a medium for most of the other colors.  Try to keep your mixtures clean and smooth and paint quite fast,  paying close attention to detail.  

Also,  it works nice to leave the lighter cloud areas white and then paint them in after the stronger colors of the sunset.    If you want to get really creative,  paint the scene with a palette knife.  I have a few examples of sunsets on my website:    www.gwodmark.com  

If you are happy with your painting,  go back to the studio and paint a larger version right away.   By doing this, the sunset image should still be etched in your memory.