A Bold Deceiver – Sunset, Tuesday, 3 June 2014

William Van Doren, A BOLD DECEIVER. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on Arches, 17 x 23.

I took a photograph of this sunset while I was sketching it, and the colors in the photo were spectacular, with brilliant gold, yellow and red spreading everywhere. However, perhaps because it was a crude shot, the high contrast blotted out details in what I was seeing — for example, what I noted as a “wonderful sick greenish gray” in the clouds. I saw something less spectacular but interesting in its own right. Of course, in the end it may be hard to pinpoint the real deceiver — the photographer, the painter, or the world itself.