Secondary Triad Harbinger

 

9/18/22 Maple Leaf neighborhood

The maple across the street, my designated early harbinger of fall, has begun to turn – almost overnight. I start checking it in early September, and in some prior years, it has started turning in late August, as it did last year. On Sept. 18 when I sketched it, it still didn’t have as much color as when I sketched it last year more than two weeks earlier. I’ve noticed that the sweet gums at Green Lake are a little later this year, too.

Color notes: It was fun looking back at last year’s sketch, when I used a primary triad. I’m pleased to be using this secondary triad now – it pushed me to make the sky lavender!

This sketch was also a terrific color temperature study. The house is actually pale yellow, but instead of bringing in the warm orange, I used a bit of the warm green as an experiment. Looking at it now, I think I should have gone with my initial thought to use orange, but I didn’t want the house to compete with the orange in the tree. In retrospect, maybe it would have balanced the tree’s orange.

I played with a combo of the cool green and dark violet for the two small but sharp cast shadows – one on the warm siding, and one on the gray rooftop. I also used varying degrees of green and violet on the two faces of the rooftop, which were both in sunlight, but the side on the right had slightly more light.

I debated on activating the dark green shadow on the whole front of the house to make it darker, but I didn’t want to bring the eye to such a large, dark shape, where it would fall off the picture’s right edge (a huge no-no in the composition-wary world). For the sake of values, however, maybe I should have made it a bit darker without activating it.

Every sketch is made with thoughts and after-thoughts!