Sunset Study - October    6x8    oil on panel

On Sunday evenings I go over to a nearby Open Space to paint sunset lighting with a few other painters. Sometimes I paint the effect of the light on the trees and bushes and sometimes the sky. The challenge here is to capture what you see before it changes or disappears. At this time of day, the colors change so fast that once you identify a color, look down to mix it, and look up again, it's gone. So it requires a little mixing of colors before you arrive so you don't have to do it on the fly. The only problem with that is that no two sunsets are alike. It's taken me about a month of Sundays to start to figure out what to expect. This little study came out pretty good but the clouds are off. I was trying to anticipate what color they would turn into and went a little dark.