Hünengrab am Meer, Abend
A Stone Age burial chamber, a dolmen, stands on a dark ridge of heath above the Baltic just after sunset. Beside it, a bare, twisted oak reaches into a sky that runs from deep slate-blue at the top through pale green-yellow to a band of peach and violet at the horizon. Two small figures stand with their backs to us at the edge of the ridge, looking out over the flat, cold sea toward a single distant sail. A thin crescent moon and the evening star hang above. In Friedrich's way, the land, the stones and the people are kept as dark silhouettes, and all the light is in the sky. The ancient grave and the dead tree set against the calm sea and the fading light make the picture about time passing and the people watching it.
Watch it being painted, with its thinking →
What the painter was asked
Compose and paint one original landscape in the manner of Caspar David Friedrich, at the easel, a simulator of oil paint on linen. The place, subject and composition are yours to invent. Work from knowledge and the notes in your studio; don't use reference images, image models or pictures of his work.
The painter's journal
- day 1, 09:00: Plan: "Dolmen on the Baltic shore at dusk". 1000x741. Horizon (sea) ruled at y=470. Sky afterglow: deep slate-blue top -> pale green-yellow -> warm peach band at horizon with thin violet cloud streak. Crescent moon ~ (700,170), evening star. Foreground dune ridge dark, rising left: y560@0, ~505@300 (dolmen), falling to ~600 at right. Dolmen (capstone on uprights) x 200-400 silhouetted against sea/sky; a gnarled bare oak rising from behind it to y~110. Two small figures on the ridge at x~640, backs to us, looking to sea. Order: drawing, thin underpainting, sky wet+blend+stipple, sea, land, dolmen, oak (rigger), figures, moon.
- day 4, 14:10: Day 3: Sky laid in five horizontal bands, blended; top deepened with a smalt/cobalt glaze and blended three times (glaze first came out swirly). Sea first too pale (too much white) — restated with smalt+black+green earth. Land: two dark layers (umber/black/green earth), firm silhouette. Next: violet cloud streaks low in sky, dolmen, oak, figures.
- day 7, 03:48: Day 5: Dolmen built (first came out pale & mushroom-like; darkened, side boulders added). Oak: body_of with char=soft made a beaded sausage — restated with char=firm, wider. Twig network grown with a recursive crooked-branch function (rigger/round, pressure tapering), 13 roots. Blend with a rect mask on DRY paint leaves a straight seam where wet paint stops: seam at y=385 disguised as top of a thin violet stratus band. Next: moon, star, two figures at x~540-565 with heads crossing the horizon, distant sail, foreground grasses/stones, fix pale smudge on trunk at (450,410).
- day 13, 16:01: Day 9-12: Sea glints laid as rigger streaks were too bright & ruled — blending turned them into a soft glow under the horizon (good). Distant sail at 820,465. Foreground: a noise-masked scumble of olive came out FAR too light (tan blotches); reworked with dark body paint wet-in-wet and a dark glaze once dry -> murky heath. Boulders came out as pale domes — need dark glaze. Lesson: on this dark field, any lead-white mixture reads loud; keep foreground lights very low.
- day 25, 07:20: Day 18 — finishing. Top sky deepened by stipple (first coarse pass left blocks; a finer, denser second pass fused into it). Upper crown restated and regrown; the veiled older twigs now read as farther branches. Halo trouble around the figures: every sea "match" I mixed was too light (lead white dominates in this sim); fixed by repainting the whole sea on each side of the trunk as one wet layer, blended. The trunk and dolmen make natural boundaries, so there's no seam. Lessons: repaint whole fields bounded by natural edges rather than patching; mix sea/sky matches darker than you think. Called it finished: "Hünengrab am Meer, Abend".
- day 26, 13:51: Day 25-26, final pass: the dolmen still read pale and mushroom-like against the sea, so I gave it and the foreground boulders a dark transparent glaze (umber/black/smalt, medium 0.55) and blended it while wet to get rid of the blotches. Once that was dry, I drew a faint cool rim along the top of the capstone and boulders. The stones now belong to the dark mass of the land, and the sky carries the light. Finished.
- day 26, 13:51: Came back and looked at it again, whole and up close. The stones now sit inside the dark land, and the figures, oak and sea hold together. The sky's afterglow carries the light the way I meant it to. Any more work would just be fiddling. I'm leaving it finished: "Hünengrab am Meer, Abend".