Daybreak

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This painting is all about the intensely -
colored and fleeting light of dawn. The challenge
for me is to capture the extreme contrasts
of light and shadow in a sensitive and believeable
way. The camera cannot capture this wide of a
dynamic tonal range, but the human eye and
brain can distinguish all the subtle nuances of
tone. As an artist, though, I have to edit out
some of this information in order to make the
scene work as a painting, and I must also
choose which elements I feel need to be
heightened or intensified in order to communicate
what I am feeling and thinking about my fast-
changing subject. So there is a lot of brain-work
and hard-won experience that goes in to this process.
Later on, back in the studio, I may be able to use
this little study to create a much larger, perhaps
more polished version of this moment. I will also
have to decide if the larger work needs to be
expressed in oil, pastel, or watercolor - it's all a
matter of the feel of the final piece.