Autumn Moon

The nights are closing in and there is a definite nip in the air. Twilight is a magical time with an almost full moon and the remains of the sunlight still hanging on the horizon. The moon always looks bigger when its low in the sky. Photographic evidence shows that this is an optical illusion and the moon is the same size regardless of its position in the sky. In a painting I would exaggerate the size a little because we expect the moon to look bigger when its low in the sky.

A bigger problem is the size of the moon relative to the size of the painting. A large landscape, lets say 3′ x 2′, can have the moon size about 1″ in diameter. A painting the size of the above, 12″ x 9″, would have a diameter so small it would look ridiculous if the proportions were scaled down precisely. So the size is again exaggerated to compensate for the small painting size.

In this small painting I wanted a largish moon that was in proportion to the rest of the landscape. I fluffed the outline  to not have a precise diameter so it can be as big, or small as you like.

As I said, its a small painting 12″ x 9″, with 3 colours, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber and Prussian Blue plus white. I am still not using black. A little solvent (White Spirits) was used to spread the paint but I used no medium. A single round bristle, No. 12, was used for the entire painting except for the fine lines in the trees. For this I used a 00 nylon brush. The painting time was about an hour.

Here’s the video of the process. See you soon.