Sunset at the Block 1

 

I painted the downtown San Angelo (locals call it the Block 1) late afternoon on October 26, 2023. It was quite an experience. The perspective was not hard, but it was very time consuming to make all the buildings look right proportionally. The light was moving super fast and the bright sun was shinning right into my eyes. I was blind by the strong light and hardly could identify any local colors. At the last moment of the sunset. The colors was so beautiful, but the brightness of the light faded so fast and my palette got dark so quickly and it was hard to identify and mix the right colors. Can we really capture the genuine colors on a sunset painting with a plein air approach?  I doubt it. However, the easy part of sunset painting is the colors do not have to be "genuine". The color scheme is so simple. The chroma is high, and the local colors have been dominated by the light source colors. If you have painted a few times, you will find the freedom in this apparently difficult subject.