My goal is ten paintings in five weeks. While I’m feeling a little bit behind, I do have # 2 of 10 complete and two additional pieces in process.
I’ve recently had a couple of people ask me about my process. What steps I take, to get from a blank white canvas to the finished product. So I decided to take a few snapshots throughout the process. First – the finished piece. Rendezvous is a 24″ x30″ Acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas (with the surface image continuing onto the 2″ deep canvas edges) – painted with a pallet knife. This piece will be part of the upcoming show at Montinore Vineyards.
And the process –
Whether I’m begining a landscape or a night street scene, many of my paintings start with a red or orange undercoat. I’m just starting to find the lines of the painting and making some decisions on color variations.
Here I’ve put down a darker layer (to add what will be the low lights) on the street and all of the buildings, except for the one that I want to be a focal point. I also started getting a feel for the windows and basic details.
I’ve closed the gap between the front buildings leaving some of the blue/gray to later emphasize as highlights, and also started adding other highlights such as some lighter blues and grays to the furthest buildings to try to create a sense of depth or distance.
Here’s where the fun part begins… I start with the lamp posts so I know where the light source will be coming from and eventually ‘splash’ reflections of light around the street and buildings.
And again – the end result. I probably should have taken a few pictures throughout the highlighting process but once I get to that stage – I just get wrapped up and excited so the process flows quickly and I wasn’t thinking about photos…