Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Painting Historic Places and Tangents

One of the historic sections of St. Augustine, Florida is called Lincolnville. Sunday morning I gathered up my easel and paints and spent the morning there painting the Bethel Missionary Baptist Church as the church service was taking place. Here are a few steps that were involved.

 

I was careful to get as accurate a drawing as I could for this painting since it's an historic landmark.

I began with this charcoal drawing on an 11x14" piece of Masonite.

Roughly laying in the colors to establish a base from which to build.

At this point I had all the shapes in place but there was one problem that I would have changed had I noticed it earlier and that is the tangent where the top of the roof on the white building in the foreground intersected with the sloping roof on the building behind it. I felt it was too late to change everything so I had to work carefully as I went along to be sure that the roof on the second building wasn't confused as a roof on the foreground building.

As you can see in the photograph, that tangent causes some confusion. Things like this are so much more evident in a photo or a painting than they are in real life that it is sometimes difficult to spot them when painting on location. I think I finally worked it out well enough in the finished painting but it was a bit of a challenge. I completed most of the painting in the field but put some finishing touches on it with oils back in the studio.


5 comments:

Billy Guffey said...

Hi Roger,

Nice painting. Would it have helped by changing the color of the roof on the middle building? Maybe just the value? With the painting being historically correct (I think I just came up with a new term. Instead of PC it's HC), would it matter about the roof?

Thanks,
Bill

Unknown said...

Probably wouldn't have mattered about the roof that much but that's the way it was so I dealt with it and left it. I did want to point out the thing about tangents though as we often do get them in our paintings unknowingly often when it's too late to go back and change them easily.

Art Painting said...

Hi sir, Hope you are fine. Am a art student and I love your painting. Being a new in this world you painting would be inspiration for me am sure. Thank much.

arianna said...

congratulationis,it's very good paintings

hello dalla Toscana,Italy :)

Wes Eisenmann said...

Love your ability to capture light and your paintings are so soft. you are a true master

Wes Eisenmann