Working from photographs is always a little more challenging than in real life except when things are moving like here where the scene is of a mountain biker riding away into the sunset. In this case it was an advertisement that I was working from, from a Mountain co-op flyer or something like that. Painting sun highlights is done by leaving the paper blank, so all the halos on the helmet, the arm and legs, and the tires are the unpainted paper. To make the highlights look bright you juxtapose dark colours, such as the dark suit of the rider, or the dark highlights of the background foliage. The main challenge when working from photo is trying not to overwork the details too much; in this painting I simplified the ground and there is very little actual detail on the bike, just a suggestion of detail. This was sold to a friend of the family having been framed, the mat is visible in this scanned photo of the original.
4 x 10 " (10 x 25 cm) cold press, Watercolour 1995?
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