Burghausen Again

Burghausen Castle, 20x30, oil on linen

I discovered a funny thing while painting this piece. We were in Germany in December 2003 so I was still using film cameras at that time. I used Seattle Film to develop my negatives, and with that they offered digital images as well that they kept in albums online. So I went to the website (now owned by Shutterfly) to download the digital image so I could work from the computer. On screen there was this odd green light in the sky which is barely visible in the bottom photo and a bit more in the top photo, going across the sky about midway. In person, this green really drew the eye to it. I was trying to explain this to someone at work, as I do take paintings to work to see them from a different point of view. I sent the digital photo to my work computer to show her, but the green did not show up on my screen at work. Go figure. So I then dug around in my photo albums and found the print. The green light was not in the printed version either. But what I did discover is that the print (4x6) showed way more detail than the digital image. So from the original photo of Burghausen that I posted a month ago, I went about adding the details that were lost to me on the screen. I made the wooden covered stair way more interesting and not so flat by suggesting the boards; I discovered window boxes under the windows; and a red door in the shadows under the walkway. I had put a door there anyway but now I knew there was one and that it was red. The dark blue window bothered me so I lightened them all up a bit. I also decided to put more detail into the whole wall and lightened the tree somewhat so it wasn't quite so dark.