By 2014 I had experimented with the new digital art images a lot. I was well into my second year on this project, the process was taking a lot longer than I had ever anticipated.  It was time to think about creating a cohesive body of work.

I wasn’t sure how I wanted to proceed, so I just started. I always love the big skies over the Newburyport marsh, so I thought I would start exploring images with big skies.

Joppa 2 © Mary Baker, digital image

“Joppa” is what is referred to an area in Newburyport’s historic district, that is in Newburyport’s South End on Water Street along the Merrimac River. It is where the clam shacks were once located, and it is where small boats and kayaks are launched; you can see Plum Island and Salisbury across the water, and at low tide, people have for centuries, gone out and dug clams.

“Joppa 2” is one of several digital images that I have done of that particular area, and I was intrigued by the color of the sky in this particular image, it wasn’t a color that I had ever thought of creating. It was another progression it this digital art project that was now well into its second year, and again another “eureka” moment.

Stack Yard Road 3 © Mary Baker, digital image

“Stack Yard Road 3” soon followed. Stack Yard Road is in Newbury, it is a dirt road that goes through the Newbury Marsh and ends at the entrance to Nelson Island which is now part of the Plum Island Refuge. I had painted this particular place many times, and had gone back to it when trying to figure out the new digital artwork.

Tree and Pasture 2 © Mary Baker, digital image

This is a second digital version of the tree and pasture,  This particular tree of “Tree and Pasture 2” is along Scotland Road in Newbury, MA, and is surrounded by a large, rural piece of land called the “Common Pasture.”  I have done many, paintings of this particular tree and that beautiful area (as have a lot of other painters and photographers).

But as I created these new images I started to notice something. When I paint a sky with oil paint, I  smug the layers of paint together so that the sky would gradually go from dark to light, from the top of the sky to the horizon line.  What was happening in these new images is that I was getting what is called “banding.”

Banding in the sky

Banding is when a transition is not smooth and you can see horizontal lines between the colors.  It was particularly noticeable to me when the skies became darker at the top, which was something new in these particular images (it didn’t happen as much in the early seascapes skies that were lighter in color).  And there are many techniques to work with this problem, but as a painter, none of them met my expectations. I thought I might have hit a major road block, and I was stumped.

For the first time I wondered if this new digital project had any hope of going forward.