Here is where we left off on the last post. You can see that I masked the part of the brick street area that would be lit up by the lamp above. I wanted to be careful to maintain some of the lines of perspective with the bricks. Otherwise it would not look like a street, but a wall. (See how the spaces between bricks make rough lines in the same perspective as the rest of the picture)
I used Moonglow and French ultramarine for the next step. (You can make a similar color with adding a little burnt sienna to purple) I picked Moonglow because it has a little granulation, which adds to the feeling of distance. I wet all the paper with a large mop brush, then working top to bottom, added Moonglow, avoiding the yellow areas of light. As I got down to the street pavement, I added French ultramarine to the mix to create all the cracks and shadows. I faded out to the sides where less light would be. As it dried, I dripped water in spots to get a little texture. Then I let it all dry.
I removed the masking fluid from the brick/street car rails. At first, the miskit took off a lot of the color.
I just added oranges and reds where I wanted some attention.
Below shows several steps. 1. I painted the buildings across the street, cooler (light purple) for those farthest away, and warming up the color gradually toward the nearest buildings. 2. I added in the windows, with the closest ones more sharply in focus, and the furthest windows very indistinct. All the while, being careful to keep them on the perspective lines. 3. I painted the darker and warmer browns of the foreground building. 4. I painted the lamppost and the more distant posts. 5. I added in some details just for fun: the purple awning across the street, the balcony, etc. 6. I added in some people.
I didn't like how yellow the sidewalk was, so I washed over it with burnt umber. I darkened the forground building with a warmer brown and darkened the shadow above the doorway. I added more shadow behind the couple walking. See how the lamp post looks like it is floating? I added a shadow to that. And I strengthened the shadow of the curb line.
Here is a closer look at the figures I added. A couple on the left and a pregnant lady crossing the street. I also added some "cracks" in the sidewalks to emphasize the perspective.
You can see I played with some color here. I really like ultramarine turquoise, and I put it in the shadows.
See above the doorway, in the street, and along the curb. I also put a bit in the store windows. I tried to strengthen the perspective lines by creating a shadow for the lamp post (which also anchored it to the ground), and darkening the shadow of the building from sidewalk clear across the brick street.
TOOLS FOR PERSPECTIVE
One handy tool for drawing buildings is an angle finder. It looks like two rulers connected at the ends. It does two main things. First, It helps you keep your vertical lines at a 90 degree angle when you are drawing. You won't end up with some of your buildings looking as if they are going to fall over.
Second it helps to find the angle or pitch of a rooftop, line of windows, sidewalk, street, etc.
You just line it up with your reference (or plein aire live reference) and figure the angle, then copy that angle onto your paper or canvas. This is one I got for my birthday...plastic, lightweight, flexible. It's actually a goniometer, used in physical therapy to measure the flexibility of a joint.
If this were my reference, and I wanted to correctly duplicate the angle of the roof, I set the center
on the apex, then pull the angle finder apart until the center lines match the lines on the roof.
Then I place the angle finder on my drawing and simply draw that angle for my roof.
If I want to be sure all my vertical lines are correct, I just line up the bottom of the angle finder on the bottom of the paper (or any horizontal line), set it for 90 degrees, and all my lines will be 90 degrees.
(sides of buildings, trees, telephone poles, fence posts, etc.)
This is really handy for me bc my bifocals sometimes mess up my sense of perspective.
JUST BRAG:
Here is Jackie's final painting from a tutorial by Paul Clark. She added the figures in afterward and some other details. It looks great!
No comments:
Post a Comment