Well, here it is! I'm halfway through my first 100 and beginning to get the knack of things and how everything works and comes together. I may even be developing my own style, but the evolution continues. I keep thinking of a caterpiller in a cocoon developing into a beautiful butterfly. And, even though I took a year off, I feel as if the development continued in my mind as I never had a moment when I wasn't thinking about color, composition, mixing, lines, edges, etc...
For this big milestone I thought it appropriate to do a little something special. I took on a little project, a request from my best half for her sister and brother-in-law for their first anniversary. I already posted the study I did for this project
here.
I started out by penciling in a drawing to get an idea of where things should go.
While I tried to figure out where to start, I painted in the sky.
I was really interested in seeing how the values of the 'crow's nest' would work with the sky color, so I started with the roof area.
I got into a groove and just kept moving down the canvas. I like how it's all coming together at this point, but there's still a lot that can go wrong, er, still a lot to do.
I changed colors for a while, the whites and blues were getting a bit monotonous, and I need to see what the other main areas of color would do to the composition. I'm really liking how this is looking at this point.
Got the stairs, walkway, and driveway in and looking good. I spent quite a bit of time on the curb, but it turned out looking really nice.
This is the part that really had me worried. All the work done so far and something so small as stair railings could ruin the whole thing. Well, I didn't have to worry very long. I did a little swipe with a couple of Qtips and laid down the paint. Nice little trick I learned from Richard Schmid! Finished up with the railing shadows and some water run off stains on the steps and voila!
Pilot House, 16x12, Oil on Canvas on Hardboard
Here it is! This photo was taken in warm light from an incandescent light and still looks pretty good to me. This is the largest project I've done to date and I learned quite a bit about mixing colors and using medium, values and edges, and most importantly patience. There were so many times I thought things didn't look right, the colors were off, the values were off, and the whole thing wouldn't really fit on the canvas. But in the end, it's all good. I'm happy to have done this project and look forward to doing more 'big' paintings in the near future.
I hope Kelly and Anthony love their first anniversary present as much as I loved painting it!
