For today I started adding some color, sky and street first. The buildings will be the “fun” part to paint, but I have to get through the basics first. Looking at it now, I think I was too hesitant with the color and will try to be a bit bolder tomorrow. And I have to do something about the angle of the far left building… It’s slightly off and driving me crazy!
I just started a painting for the Homewood art competition. Day one is a basic under painting in brown tones. I really liked how the under painting worked in my church painting from a few months back, so let’s try it again!
I got a letter from Jerry Reinsdorf!!!! (He’s the chairman of the White Sox…) How awesome is this??!!
After taking 11 months to paint the grayscale, large, baseball piece, I needed a quick dose of color and feathers on a small canvas!
Red-winged blackbirds are some of my favorite birds. When I used to work at a nature center with children, these birds would make a squawking sound that made us all laugh. It kind of sounded like “tweet…tweet…tweet…SQUAAAAAAAAAAAWK!!!!” A funny sound, from such a serious-looking little bird!
For the painting I started with a simple, fun-to-paint, shades of red and brown background. I sketched in the bird with a pastel pencil, then painted over with 3 shades of black and bluish-gray. I started painting in the fence the bird was standing on, but thought it was ugly and took away from the bird. Keep it simple - good philosophy!
This is after the first day of painting on my latest piece. It is pretty big, 30” x 40”. I took the reference photo in person a few years ago at Opening Day for the White Sox, section 537.
If you look closely, you can see a basic grid drawn in charcoal. I draw a grid first on the photo, then larger on the canvas/panel. Basically, I use the grid to firm up how big shapes are and where lines meet the edge of the surface. I find it easier to be visually correct using a grid than just guessing or eyeing it.
Oh those stripes! The flag stripes were easy, but I think I painted over the grass stripes 4 times! Every painting starts somewhere though, and you really need to get the basics down before you can build up the details.
Added the buildings in the background, and eye-balled the stars in the flag. Between the stripes in the grass and those stars, I am really not liking geometrical shapes right now! I will go back and fix up those stars before it is all done. All of the basic shapes and tones are here, so time for all the fun details. I love that you can just make a few swipes with a brush and that random shape looks like a building.
