Monday, March 7, 2016

Backyards - A Work in Progress

It is a nice mild day with the temperature at 47F (8.3C) and the ice on the driveway starting to melt.

We are having the second to last workshop with Lucy Manley and are going to do a street scene on black canvas using a mosaic style of painting.

I was supposed to do a painting last year (see post on 19 October 2015) but was unable to start painting in that style as I had to leave early.

I already had a couple of canvases painted black and used this one called Background 52 (see post on 21 October 2015) from that workshop.

The outlines of the buildings were sketched onto the canvas using cadmium red.

Since the background was already the darkest dark we started the painting with the lightest light, in this case titanium white for the sunlit snow, the white window frames and the clouds.

Adding Cerulean blue to the white for the next lightest colour, the snow and the brightest part of the sky were indicated.















For the next darker colour ultramarine blue as added to the white for the darker area of the sky and the cast shadows in the snow.

The background trees were indicated with various mixtures of cadmium red, cadmium yellow, white and a small amount of alizarin crimson.

Next was to start painting in the various buildings. Using the tree colour and adding a little ultramarine blue to grey the colour, the larger background house was painted and then the shadow under the eaves of the garage, the small area of roof from the house and the smaller shed in front of the garage.

Adding a little more white to the grey a few highlights were added to the larger house and the shadowed side of the garage was painted.

After adding a little more white to the grey mix, the sunlit side of the garage was completed.

Lastly a mix of raw sienna, burnt sienna and white was used to indicate the front of the house across the street on the right side of the painting.

I will post this painting at a later date once I have completed more work on the various buildings.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and enjoy the artwork.