Northern Ave Gray Day

Northern Ave Gray Day - Stage One

On this May morning, the outside temperature was 51 degrees, but there with heavy overcast and rain on the way, it felt quite chilly along Northern Ave on the Boston waterfront.   My thought was, capture the scene quickly and finish in the studio if necessary.  The clouds were very pretty in a stormy kind of way.   I used my round palette knife to swirl the cloudy sky.    Everything had a gray tinge to it, even the one "vivid" part of the scene, which was the long row of international flags lining the top of the World Trade Center.

Dots of color on palette for flags

Gray Day Northern Ave

I tried to loosen up and just render an impression, with an emphasis on the right colors and values.  There was lavender leaning blue in every color. In the photo of my palette, I demonstrate how I painted the international flags.   I created a row of bright colorful dots of paint comprised of the colors in the flags.   Using my palette knife I scraped up the line of paint dots onto the straight edge, then applied the straight edge of the palette knife with all the colorful dabs of paint making a short vertical stroke upward.   The knife was wiped clean and the remainder of the colorful dots were scooped up with the opposite edge of the palette knife and short vertical strokes down so that the row of flags were completed.  This produced an impressionistic rendering of the flags