Thursday, August 27, 2020

Street Scene- First Attempt

 There is never just one way to accomplish what you want with a painting. Especially with landscapes and city scenes. I don't consider myself accomplished at buildings for several reasons. It is a real wrestling match deciding over what would be the best way to paint. 

So here we go. I have no idea if this will turn out well, so you'll get to watch me, step by step, sink or swim.

First, I pulled this picture from Paint My Photo. It was very skewed, so I used photo shop to straighten it out a little.

 Sketching it took a lot of time. There are so many decisions to make: loose or realistic? colorful or muted? what details to keep/leave out? How can I unify the picture? 

I decided to paint very wet at first, but I didn't want to redraw important details. So I took a page from Alex Hillkurtz and used a pen to sketch in some of those details I didn't want to lose. I was going begin by painting a bullseye, as he does. However, the idea of painting the background cool to warm and the foreground warm to cool had more appeal for me. 

I put some tracing paper over the top to decide where I want my warmest colors.

I wet the entire paper with a large brush.

Using French ultramarine, magenta, and quin gold, I painted the background cool to warm, beginning with French ultramarine, adding magenta, and then quin gold at the bottom. I was trying to follow my plan. 

I painted on a slightly tilted easel using Arches 140 lb rough.



Then I tackled the window areas, painting those top to bottom, cool to warm. 
(still using the same 3 colors)


More next time.




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