Torii Gate in the Daylight
Torii Gate at Night
I’ve been playing with soft watercolor washes with the goal of capturing simplicity as an image of beauty. After painting a torii gate in the water during daylight, I decided to invert the file and add a moon above the gate and light dancing off the night waters. It was fun to play with both, day and night.
For the wash, I only used four colors (two shades of blue, a brown and a soft golden yellow) that I laid layers of transparency at various places for effect. Once I completed the wash, I distorted the water below the torii and then applied a Photoshop watercolor filter. For the finishing touch, I added soft lighting.
– genece hamby, contemporary artist & poet
http://www.shibuistudio.com
The daylight tori has a pure and elegant beauty - but I am a night person. I love the moon shiniing over the scene.
I like both paintings, but for different reasons. Both are quite striking, and I think you have/are achieving that organic simplicity feel….great results on your exploration - and in the middle of chaos! But that’s what we do - strive to bring order to chaos when we create…
this is beautiful
i took a class on japanese culture and history last semester and I enjoyed the slides our teacher showed us. this reminds me of them. 
These are beautiful paintings, Genece. I can visualize then hanging in matching frames…night and day. Superb job.
Vi
there’s a life lesson when you put these paintings together - something like, what a difference a few hours can make…
These are both so traquil and beautiful. Like Vi, I can imagine them in matching frames, side by side. Paintings like these, that I can lose myself in, are always my favorites.
Very peaceful and worthy of meditation.
This is gorgeous - I don’t know if anyone else noticed (or if it even happens to anyone else - maybe I’m slowly going insane
), but when I scroll the page up and down, the night painting becomes lighter, and then darker as the page moves. The reds and blues in it just came out of the dark at me as I moved the page up. Very magical!
It is amazing how you bring peace out of chaos. The deep feeling of stillness simply glows from both photos. They are both lovely for different reasons. The pale wash of color in the day image is calming and relaxing. In the night image, the torii gate looks like a chair, and the idea of sitting under the moon in the shifting water is an appealing one.