Sunset, Tuesday, 16 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Twilight. The clouds on the horizon really were orange-pink, and the blown-apart contrails that sort of violet pink, and ... perhaps that’s enough about how things “really” were.

Sunset, Sunday, 14 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Daylight Saving Time. But of course. Saving daylight is what we do here, every night of the year.

This view is turned toward the northwest, much like last night’s.

Sunset, Saturday, 13 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

I cheated tonight’s perspective slightly north, or right, almost to a summertime sunset horizon, since that’s where everything seemed to be happening.

Sunset, Friday, 12 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Rain, and clouds so low they seem to be rolling through the tree branches. Which brings up a question many people seem to have: “What do you do when you can’t see the sunset?”

You can always see the sunset, even if you can’t see the sun set.

Sunset, Sunday, 7 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Brightwood, Culpeper County, Va. Oil on linen, 16 x 20.

This was the third version of Sunday’s sunset that I sketched and more or less completely ‘got’ while we were on the road home from Westminster, Maryland, via Frederick and Leesburg. Ultimately I felt I had to get the “pink ray” that shot up on the left.

Baltimore Sunset (A Note)

Tonight’s sunset, when it gets posted (probably not until Monday, ditto for tomorrow’s), will come from a vantage point on York Road in northern Baltimore, at a spot where I’ve done several others. Right now it’s just a cryptic-looking ballpoint sketch in a notebook with a few words scribbled all over it, like “dirty pale [‘pale’ underlined three times] gold,” “pale drained blue,” “stronger blue.” I talked with a friend about this, about how, after watching and painting a few thousand sunsets, it becomes more and more possible to remember them, or get them into a linear sketch. There develops a shorthand vocabulary of the sky that can contain personal shades of distinction and bring back the most important thing, which is, the moment.