San Francisco Cityscape

URBAN LANDSCAPE LOOKING SOUTH UP GREENWICH FROM BAY STREET.

UPDATE Feb 20, 2017: Done! While it took a long time to finish, it was a very rewarding project. Tackled a number of new challenges, but took my time and exercised a wealth of patience to not rush to the finish line. The hardest part turned out to be the alignment of the near foreground building facades and their maddening rows of windows.

UPDATE Jan 21, 2017: Worked on practicing drawing cars before getting back to the canvas. Took a number of tries, but once my brain “saw” the fix, it got much easier with each subsequent sketch. Duh! Now I’ve returned to this urban landscape to add the cars in the foreground. So far so good.

UPDATE Dec 18, 2016: Been working on this off and on for the past couple months. It’s been very slow moving, but I’m learning a lot about breaking down complexity, pushing and pulling with values, and most recently, the challenge of painting vehicles. Added a few of the latest progressions to the photo collage; note the zoom-in view of the cars in the final picture. Fingers crossed that I can make the time to finish this piece before the end of 2016.

 

Reference Photo: San Francisco
Initial block-in
atmospheric cool distance
GREENWICH VIEW || 20″ x 16″ Oil on Canvass || $250
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Danube River Village

New project today from a photo along the Danube. My wife and I were visiting the Christmas Markets this past year, mostly in Austria and Germany. They were fantastic! Along the river these idyllic scenes were commonplace. We had ridden bikes along the river the day before and visited this church.

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Smaller canvas this time around. Working on loose and colorful, with very strong contrast in values where the late day light is hitting the tops of the buildings. This post is about 3 hrs of work. Moved a little slow at the start to get the sketch right. Usually I draw the subject before trying to paint it, but opted to jump right in this time.

Updated progress: Couple of hours working on the detailed village. Getting the proportions and values in the shaded areas took patience, but very rewarding. One more session focused on the water reflections should get us most of the way there.

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Forgot to add the finished painting from a few months ago. I like how this turned out but need to practice with more river landscapes.

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El Capitan update

Finished this piece a couple months ago, but forgot to post the last update. Originally this was going to be a practice piece to study the composition in preparation for doing a much lager painting. However, it was so interesting, I ended up with a more complete piece than planned. I’ll still do the larger piece, but I’m not going to jump right into it just yet.

In the end, I opted to stick with the knife only for the mountain itself, but the rest of the landscape was done with various brushes. This created a nice textural contrast, which may not be readily apparent in the picture below.

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Yosemite – El Capitan

Started a new project this week, El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. This is a massive wall of rock that is a marvel to see in person. I haven’t been able to find them on the photo, but there are a number of climbers on the wall. If I hadn’t taken the picture myself I wouldn’t believe it either.

This composition is actually a study to get some key aspects of the hues and values figured out prior to doing a much larger piece. This particular effort is being done on a 12×18 canvass board, all oils, using palette knife only.

Figuring out the variations of grays, both sunlit and shaded, is proving to be an enjoyable challenge. This is a great way to really learn the subtleties of warm and cool grays.

Another session or two and this preliminary piece should be done. Still need to get the right half of the shadow area done, but it’s moving along at a faster clip now that the value scale has finally been figured out. There’s more paint on this piece than I’d like to admit.

 

El Capitan
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Heceta Head Lighthouse

This was a fun one! This is Heceta Head Lighthouse on the Oregon Coast. Breathtaking coastline and this area is particularly rugged and beautiful. One day I’ll replicate this painting en plein air, but for this iteration I had to use a reference photo. At least the photo was taken by myself, so I had a sense for the place; hoping some of that personal experience made it into the final work.

This piece is on 12″x18″ gesso panel and took about 8 hours to complete. While I still have a couple of minor highlights to add, this is close enough to the final product to call it done. I have never painted ocean, so the waves were a challenge, but I’ve started taking some lessons with a new instructor for a few hours every other week, and she was a tremendous guide when I ran into problems. If you like landscapes, check out her work at Mary Watkins Fine Art.

The palette is what I’m most excited about with this piece. While there’s a lot of (for me) technical skills that come into play with the water/waves/rocks, it’s the hues that I’m most excited about. Mary was very instrumental in teaching me about landscape warming and cooling using hues I hadn’t considered. Previously I had thought in terms of strict color wheel compliments to adjust saturation, but I learned how to think through the balance of what makes up colors that trend towards one end of the spectrum or another. For example, the use of Lemon Yellow, Cad Yellow Medium, or Yellow Ochre was actually a critical decision for this entire piece. Can you guess the winner and why?

Reference photo and progression timeline below. Enjoy!

Reference photo – Heceta Head Lighthouse – August – 8pm
Value rough in
HECETA HEAD || 12″ x 16″ Oil on Board || $250

 

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Lamar Bridge into Austin

Getting close to finishing this Austin urban landscape piece. The view is from the south across the river towards downtown. The city has grown a lot since this photo was taken, so those familiar with the area might wonder why I excluded some buildings; not the case, they just weren’t there a few years ago.

Oil on gesso board, mostly brush work, done in studio with photo reference (included below). The bridge was tricky, despite having done a couple of practice drawings. It’s been an exercise in patience, having to redo various parts, but it’s been a great “learner” piece, specifically with the sky and water. I’ve started taking some formal art lessons every other week, and my teacher gave some great guidance with the sky and the water reflections. Confidence with these elements is 10x what it was a month ago. Not sure if it comes through in the photos, but the colors are rich, probably a tad too saturated, but the values and reflections are solid enough to carry the composition.

The bridge needs some tweaks to the facade so it’s not so flat, the addition of cars on the road, and a few street lights. At that point I’ll call it done. One more short session should do the trick. I’ll post the final product this coming weekend.

 

AUSTIN LAMAR BRIDGE || 9″ x 12″ Oil on Board || $150
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Diving Whale Tail

Stuck with the whale theme for this next project. This is a diving whale based loosely on a reference photo I found on-line. Also bought some Payne’s Gray to work on a more balanced value gradation on this piece that is dominated by the tail.

I think this is pretty close to done, but I don’t like the matte finish, so I’m going to do a final glaze layer in hopes of giving the entire piece a wet look.

This is a diptych, each panel measures 9″ x 12″. I was pretty specific with the panel choice so as to get good proportions for the tail. In fact, I think the painting looks better than it really is b/c of the diptych layout. Curious what others think, too.

Technical Details:

  • 2 gesso panel boards, 9″x12″ each
  • Brushes – 2 flats (sizes 2 and 4), 1 round (size 4)
  • Tail palette – Payne’s Gray, Titanium White, and variations of Black and Ultramarine Blue
  • Ocean – Ultramarine Blue + variations of Pthalo Blue, Pthalo Green, and Titanium White.
  • Water dripping off tail – Titanium White + Naples Yellow + Paynes Gray + Ultramarine Blue
Quick practice sketch.
Quick practice sketch.
Rough in with diptych composition.
Rough in with diptych composition.
Ocean with initial tail shadow.
Ocean with initial tail shadow.
Tail almost done
Tail almost done
Water running off tail and updates to ocean near tail with ripples.
Water running off tail and updates to ocean near tail with ripples.
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French Countryside – Practice Study Done

Got back to the first painting study of the French Countryside (Loire Valley) landscape. Been awhile since I had worked on this one, but past post for reference here.

I liked how this came out, and ended up investing more time than originally planned. I definitely learned a lot about how I will change the composition when I do the “real” thing on a larger canvass (as opposed to this paper session), but enjoyed working in a  lose style and worked very hard on not sweating the details.

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I was pleased with a number of things:

  • Good balance of greens. The photo doesn’t show it very well, but the range of values also gives texture that I didn’t intend initially, but you can bet I won’t forget how it came together.
  • Dark rain clouds in the far distance have the right effect of coming storm.
  • Rose bushes, a complete improvisation, came out really well, especially given the speed at which they were done, ~ 15 minutes. I also find the red on green background works well to make them pop a little, giving them a good foreground effect to draw the viewer into the painting.
  • The fence line, meant to be wire strung along old wooden posts, can be painted better in a future composition, but I’m happy with how the variation in direction of the fence gives the sense of an undulating field. Also meant to direct the eye along the fence, across the field, and into the village and beyond. Not sure if that’s actually happening for viewers, but happy to be told I’m way off base here.
  • Trees have good depth and capture the direction of the sunlight well.
  • Clothes line, another improvisation, serves it’s primary purpose of giving a sense of wind from the approaching storm, as well as a nice focal point in the center of the composition.

What to do differently next time:

  • The village buildings are not well done. I wanted them to be muted, but I lost focus on them too much and the value variations between them are junk. For me, there are buildings further back in reality that appear to be too far forward. I also don’t like the roofs, which need to have a wider range of colors.
  • The green field in the distance is too saturated and a little too light. Need to push that back a little next time.
  • The clothes line is good, but can be improved. Wanted to add a person pulling down the clothes, but quickly learned that I don’t have that skill yet.
  • The clouds are awful. Need to practice in some other sessions, but globbed on paint too thickly and focused too much on the cloud shapes.
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“Baleine!” c’est fini

This piece came together very quickly. Pretty happy with the end result. No brush work – all knife, so I pushed myself to develop more expertise with this tool. There were a few trying moments to get edges right, but it really opened my eyes to the nuances of manipulating the paint once it’s on the board.

The iPhone photos don’t capture the textural knife effects, but hopefully you get the idea of the progressive development in the time sequence below.

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Light pencil sketch as outline.
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Session 2 gets the initial values, sky, and some experimentation with the ocean colors.
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Session 3 made big strides. Figured out the right balance of ocean colors – blues and greens. Whale tail has initial form, but needs work – too flat.
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Session 4, lots of work to get the tail coloring and values right. Also figured out the water light reflection onto the bottom of the tail. Finally committed to having really tumultuous water, so added white caps and spray. Pure guesswork… no idea what I’m doing at this point. The painting knife and I were not on speaking terms for a brief span of time.
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Finished! Added touch ups in various places, but most notably updated the values on the horizon part of the ocean – it was too dark and contiguous, so broke it up with some white caps and lighter blue mixes.
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“Baleine!”

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Started another piece called “Baleine!”. This is a humpback whale diving. Going to do this as a knife painting to get some texture that will reflect light and give the sense of water/wet on the whale. This is a small gesso board, which works well for knife work.

The palette is pretty straight forward, but the water will be a little tricky, largely b/c I’m a water moron. But it will be a good exercise. The whale tail itself should move quickly, as the tricky part is the initial dimensions and shape, which I spent some time already working through before putting gone the board to paint.

I roughed in the sky as part of this first session, thinking I just wanted to get the right value on the board so the contrast with the tail would work. But it turns out that the “rough” in is pretty good and likely I’ll just keep it as is.

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