"My Town"

The beginning's of a whimsical take on my town, Calgary. Some of the recognizable places are evident like the "Saddledome", "Bow Tower", and "Calgary Tower". The houses in the middle ground represent inner city communities of Sunnyside and Hillhurst. These i plan on doing brightly colored and fun. The city buildings will mostly be grays, blues, purples outlined in white and a sky filled with dancing images and stars. Not too sure what to do with the foreground yet and have to be careful. A painting like this can become too busy in short order. The rows of houses will be the focal point of it all. These are fun to do and i have hopes of doing a series based on local, familiar areas. We shall see. I get sidetracked so easily. Sigh! Hope all are having a great day with new paintings all around. God bless, and Happy New Year.

WIP 4

I'm still plugging away at this which is good considering there was a point i thought it may not work. The colors were not working together. There was something not quite right and i had been unable to figure out what it was. So i washed off the sky, re-applied the masking, and went to work intensifying and adjusting the color relationships. The foreground i left alone as i was quite happy with that, the sidewalk was too gray and unappealing so i added color and swatches of blue for sparkle, the buildings needed depth so i washed over them with blues, yellows and greens. Then i darkened the buildings near the end of the street so they would recede more. The focal point of this piece is the Pointe building on the corner which will receive different treatment than the others. I still have much to do. The little people, the starry sky, some highlights on the clouds, the windows and such. I'm pleased with where it is going and can "see" the result i want which was not the case two days ago.

This is number 39 and i have 40 on the go. Four more painting days left! There is no pressure now and i'm having fun once again. There may even be time to try an acrylic or two. I'd love to have a canvas in the show but i am not an acrylic painter and have that on my list of things to do when done with the Opening.

"WIP"

Okay, here is my WIP. The first image is a drawing of a local area in Calgary called Kensington. I make the drawing fairly whimsical. I have to start with something though, so i take a photo and work from that. Here i have masked all the buildings and the people as i am looking for an outline effect on the buildings. The people will get painted in last. 

Once the masking is dry i decide what my colors will be and begin by laying in large washes over the sky and then the foreground. For the sky i mixed five colors, three blues and two reds. I just let them mingle on the palette and dip into the different pools as i put the paint on from left to right. It is important to mix more paint than you might need. If you run out half way across it can be a bit of a problem. I had an instructor once who said "paint like a millionaire". I know now what she meant! 

For the foreground i mixed five separate pools of color again, two reds, two yellows and a blue.  I let them mingle and lay them in from left to right. I leave little patches of white in both areas and will use them later. Now i have to let it all dry really well before i go over it again. This is where i can pick up another painting to work on while i wait. Or do a blog posting. By for now!