My Sketchbook Journal: Winter Barn

The Winter Barn

Looking at the final edit it is giving me now a cozy barn in the middle of the cold and snowy forest pine. The night is still and bright with the stars above and the falling snow. There is a faint smoke coming from the barn that tells of warmth inside it.

Here are some progress drawing so you have an idea how I made my entry:

I do not have a plan at the start I was just going through the motion and somehow I made a dark tree shape on the left. I then duplicated it to reflect the one on the right. I thought I need some brighter colors so the blue random flowers came about.

The composition looks very dull and dark and my initial reaction is put some white and thus the snow appeared. It was fun adding the snow on the tree branches but the snow on the forest floor was a little challenging for me because the paved path is getting difficult to execute. The red barn is just an afterthought to balance the all blue and white color combination I thought some red would help keep it balanced.

Now that it is looking complete it is time to define the shapes even more. Starting with the trees I added more fine lines in lighter color to give texture to the bark. The smoke from the barn is nice touch too as well as the falling snow although they are meant to be stars at first. The distant mountains at the back and more line details on the path were added to complete the look. One last decision I had to make is to move the blue flowers a little down to the bottom as they are competing with the barn instead of framing it which is the original plan. I do not know what it is but they are really competing for attention in my opinion.

I think the overall composition needs a highlight. So I put this bright white on the edges of the trees and snow and I love it. I am still not settled with the blue flowers though so I made another major decision to remove them. Lastly I applied a filter to make the image have that dark and warmer tone.