Anatomy of a Painting: SouthEnd

One of my most popular posts of all time has been the one entitled  "Anatomy of a Painting", showing the step-by-step process of creating a painting in an olive grove of Provence. Now I am going to reprise the concept, and show the anatomy of a painting in a completely different landscape (some might not even call it a "landscape")

--the urban environment along the light rail tracks in my own hometown.

We have had a wonderful spell of warm fall days, and I have taken to the streets! Or more accurately, to the parking lots. I am loving the series of urban landscapes that have emerged. The top photo shows the view that I chose this week. The building is the Dilworth Artisan Station (home to my studio space), so I know it well. And I love the "industrial antique" perched above--an old dust bin. It filtered dust particles from the air, back in the era when textile cut-and-sew operations were conducted in the building. Appropriately, it is shaped somewhat like a cyclone (in my eye).

Here is my initial drawing. I started on a 12 x 9 inch oil primed linen panel. I had toned it with a neutral brownish tone. I am often tempted to include too much detail in architectural subjects, so I was trying to keep myself focused on simple shapes. I started before 10 AM, and I knew that the sun would be moving fast and changing the parts of the buildings that were in light and in shadow, so I quickly blocked in the shadow shapes (in a low value blue), and the light shapes (in a high value orange). All right!! I was starting to like what I was seeing.

"Artisan Station" in process
(c) Lesley Powell 2014

Next I began the serious work of LOOKING and SEEING the colors. Where was the lightest light? (The sunny side of the dust bin). The brightest bright? (Hard to say...maybe the slice of sun on the righthand structure?). The darkest dark? (Shade under the eaves of the middle structure? or shadow side of building? Hmmmmm...). On and on, looking, trying to see, mixing colors. And of course, the light was changing all the time! The image just above shows the painting as it stood when the outdoor session ended.

I was pleased with the painting at this point, but thought it needed a few small corrections. Some of the shadow areas were not painted yet. I would have left the raw canvas showing in these areas, but they were the "darkest dark" areas, and so the value of the undertones canvas was not correct. I tried to exercise restraint and do only the slightest work in the studio.  I didn't want to "kill it", as we say when we fatally overwork a painting, to the point that it loses its freshness. You can see the finished product here. Let me know what you think....