St John Morning 2

Well, I tried this one again. It's on Art Spectrum, which I found out doesn't seem to grip the soft Senneliers as well. That was frustrating! So, I ended up using harder sticks over soft, which is supposed to be a no no. I tried to show some of the rooftops from the photo and a little backlight from the sunrise.
I'm trying to restrain myself from blending.

A little tweak

I notice that this really lost some of it's depth in posting, also probably a camera problem. The actual painting has much more contrast in value. I played around with a digital fix to get the contrast to show truer;

St John mornings

This is a quick sketch that I did today. It's 9 X 12, on Canson paper. I ordered this medium that I had never heard of, until recently. It's from Russia and it's called Yarka Sauce (pronounced "saw-oose"), and I wanted to try it out. It's sort of a pastel, but you can blend it with water and brush it on, or use it as a pastel(which is what I did). Well, I started with the sauce, but switched to soft pastels.
We spent our vacation in the US Virgin Islands last March, on St John. It was wonderful and it all seems like a dream to me now. This was the view from our terrace early every morning before the sun got strong enough to burn off the dramatic clouds. My camera is acting up and the painting is not so blurry in real life.
I'm reserving judgement on "the sauce"!