Painting Aggressively

Greetings from South Portland, Maine! Plein air sessions in the July Texas heat aren’t exactly an inspirational setting for creativity, so this piece is brought to you by the cool breezes of the land of 75,000 moose. 

This garage was painted over the course of 3 short sessions in the mid/late afternoon. The shadows created by the sun really make the garage door pop, so I wanted make that the clear focal point without making the white to prominent. The final solution was to tweak it so the black window of the door was the primary focus, using the high contrast in values with the white door as an easy viewing vortex. 

In terms of the other elements, a lot of artistic license was taken to pare down the details and keep things simple. That said, it was important for me to include the iron fence and the color of the garage. The fence because the ironwork is very eye catching given the design. As to the green hue of the garage, while I’ll admit it’s not my preferred color, I wanted anyone who’s seen this house and garage to instantly recognize it as “hey, it’s that green garage!”

Lastly, I made a decision in the final minutes of painting, after having thought I was done, which significantly improved the finished piece. Because I don’t have a before and after shot, I can only describe what I did, which was to add the high contrast “rows” on the garage, then scraping down to give the sense of textured panels. I was pretty sure the move was going to muddle the whole thing, but as it turns out it was a vast improvement. I must learn to be much aggressive when painting and this sessions went a long way in validating that approach. 

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