This is the underpainting for a painting of the St. John's Bridge. I did a wash of left over color from another painting prior to this days work. Sometimes it can be good when color from the underpainting shows through.
Once the wash dries, I made a 4 x 4 grid in pencil on the canvas an a matching grid on the much smaller photo that I am working from. This lets me transfer the geometry in a more accurate way.
In this case, I used a hard charcoal pencil to sketch in the geometry and then used a mixture of dark blue, brown and iron oxide to create a tonal study.
It is nice to see this stage of a work. I am curious about your decisions leading up to this view: photos, of course. Were there any thumbnails? The composition looks like it is really going to work well. Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteDS
Dave,
ReplyDeleteI assume this is the Dave that I know from work.
If so, thanks for being the first to make a comment. If not I am thrilled to have a comment from someone I don't know.
The final painting is in a more recent entry in the blog.
I visited the site of the bridge and did take a lot of photos, including one from the vantage point shown. None of the photos came out well and I wanted to get going on the painting so I was influenced by an anonymous image on the internet. I adjusted the lighting, colors and sky to be more like the influential image.
I went straight to the canvas from looking at my photos and the borrowed one.
Thanks again for the comment.