Using Masonite and an alternative

A question I am frequently asked is about painting on Masonite board. Here's a short video about using and preparing boards for painting and an alternative to Masonite called Panel Board.

 

 

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.