For my unit four project, I painted this sunrise setting with acrylics. I'm very proud of how it turned out, but the process was- interesting. I changed the sky color three times, which you can see in the progress pictures. I also had to do a quick study of the sun/sunsets in order to finally get it right on the third attempt. I wish I had used a bigger canvas, though I'm very proud of my color palette.
The following two images are my progress pictures. At first, this painting wasn't going to be my unit project. I've NEVER used acrylics, so this was supposed to just be practice. But as I went on, I like it more and more and turned it into my project. As you can see, the color of the sky and lighting changed MULTIPLE times throughout the process.
The following three images are my reference pictures. Most of the details I painted were pulled out of my own head, but in instances like the sky/sunset, I very much needed references. The composition was also inspired by the first reference (which wasn't intentional, as this was supposed to be practice anyway)
My master artist for this project was Thomas Hart Benton. He was a popular artist leading up to World War 2 and captured the transition between agricultural to industrial society. I really like his almost cartoon style, it was very expressive and I tried to adopt these traits into my own project.
