To whit! Here is the colour study for The Lightning of Creation. A very positive and powerful picture grasped from a dull day. The colours are very muted and I worried about the tones a little. It's normally best to have a picture that works in black and white (I don't mean greyscale; I mean just two tone) and also warm and cold (again two tone). Here the mountain foreground (grey; raw umber) and the figure (grey; light red) are warm and the sky (plain grey) cold but the foreground can't easily be made lighter than the sky and, yet the dark brooding dramatic sky really sets the mood so this will probably match the final painting almost exactly. A study like this is important just for the cloud arrangement. There is a hidden pentacle in the composition which is why it seems balanced despite the many lines of focus that zip all over the place.
