Sarah and I spent the afternoon at the Vilano Beach boat launching area near St. Augustine, Florida. I chose the back of this bait house mainly because I liked the palms. Here's the progression of the painting.
This was a 9x12" masonite
board. I used charcoal to lay out the large areas.
I have found charcoal to be
really useful in getting started because I can easily
visualize the large shapes. In the first image (above) I
thought the house was too small for the composition and
with charcoal it can easily be wiped off for a clean start.
Very benificial.
I began with the large shapes
and wasn't at all concerned with details at this point but
I was concerned with the brushwork, much of which can remain
and actually show up in the finished painting.
The house was actually a green
color but I decided to keep it in the yellow ranges to
maintain more harmony within the overall painting. I also
extended the roof so more of it was showing and wanted to
make it a tin roof instead of shingles. I wasn't at all
bound to painting exactly what I was seeing since it was not
an historic representation.
Then the sky was placed in the
painting along with a few subtle clouds. Putting the sky in
at this point allows me to put negative areas in those palms
later and by not putting the sky in first I was able to keep
those dark transparent colors on the dark palm tree areas.
The perspective would have to be attended to on the building
as well as it wasn't quite right.
Refinements began. Opaque
colors were applied over the original dark colors of the
palms.
The side of the buiding
bothered me. I didn't want to add any of the railings I saw
on the building but in the final painting I added some tall
poles just to break up that area.
Come to St. Augustine if you
have a chance. It's a great place to paint.
2 comments:
A a huge fan of your painting sir. As I mentioned before in the last post am leaning about art and paintings. Your every painting is like a book for me. Thanks for the wonderful post.
Yesterday on the PBS station that you are on you mentioned gluing canvas to your Masonite board. I search web sights that had canvas on a roll but there were so many choices, I didn't know what to pick. Could someone please tell me?
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