Work-up of my hand-painted photograph: Misty Morning

One of my favorite places on Sanibel Island is the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge. One morning, just as the gate opened, I drove through the Refuge's wetland and mangrove area while there was still mist rising from the earth. It was beautiful and added a softness to the scene. By the time I reached the location where I wanted to photograph the sun was burning away the mist. There was just a small amount of mist still there. Well, the mist was so subtle that I didn’t catch it in my photographic image. I am assuming I used an incorrect exposure. But, since I hand-paint my images, I was able to create the mist so that the image was that soft surreal image I saw when I drove up to photograph it. 

Misty Morning ~ hand-painted photograph

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Original color photograph

Black and white photograph

Black and White -I changed the color image into a black and white image.

Original color photo - When I drove up to this scene, a small amount of mist swirled in the shadows. I was hoping I could catch it before it all disappeared.

After changing the color image into a black and white image, I then added an uneven blanket of colors over the image creating a soft feeling. Then I removed the paint from the foreground because I wanted the foreground to be sharper and brighter than the background. In this image you can also see the pale turquoise I painted onto the leaves of the ferns.

After painting each leaf a pale turquoise, I realized I needed the fern to be a brighter color, so I had to go back and repaint each leaf again!

Painting leaves turquoise so they stand out from the background

Painting some of the leaves a soft green to give dimension to leaves.

I then began painting areas of the background so they would stand out. I first started with turquoise, leaving some leaves blank. Then I returned and painted the blank leaves a soft green.

In order not to miss painting any of the leaves...well, at least TRY not to miss any...I put a grid over the entire image. I enlarged the image in photoshop to the size of one of the squares and painted the leaves in that square before moving on to the next square.

Next, I painted the foreground Sea Grape leaves dark green and then painted various plants in the background with the same dark green, again using the grid pattern to do so. 

Then I noticed that the foreground ferns needed to be brighter to contrast better with the background, so I repainted them for the third time. 

Almost final. I wanted the scene to reflect that soft misty scene I saw when I drove up, so there was a bit more work to do.

FINAL Misty Morning ~ hand-painted photograph

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FINAL – I added the mist that I saw when I drove up to photograph the scene.

I’m often asked how long does it take you to paint a scene. Of course the answer depends upon the scene. This scene had a lot of detail so it took a long time. I worked on it on average 4 hours a day for three weeks.