A few months ago, I put a sharp corner of a framed painting through the middle of a large (30 x 48 inch) in-progress painting. I may have shared that sad story back when it happened? I pulled the ripped canvas off the stretcher bars, sized up a nice new length of gesso'd linen, and stretched it again. I toned it with a mid-value neutral color. That was several months ago - and there it sat. The weather was nice as a plein air painter, I enjoyed plenty of beautiful days outside.
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| Market Street - Stage One |
As soon as the temperatures started to cool I turned my attention to the studio. I placed the BIG blank canvas on it. I wanted to start planning out this large studio work. I had the urge to include every attractive element I had been painting or photographing in the past few months.
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| Market Street - Stage Two |
What would that include? Rustic buildings, stone walls, Irish farmhouses, festivals full of color, sunlit boats with pretty reflections, seals sunning themselves, bees buzzing around my pink and yellow zinnias, fireworks, city skyline. Very exciting! This was the brainstorming phase of composing the piece. I guess I could have jammed in all the attractive elements I had been envisioning, turning it into a fantasy painting, but realistically I needed to decide on a theme.
I did some sketching and printed a few of my favorite festival and marketplace photos, assembling a horizontal collage of scenes that were attractive to me. I worked on building up a dark and light pattern that was appealing. I wanted a "random - but planned" series of "lightest lights."
Even as early as Stage One image above, the abstract dark and light pattern is visible. The warm afternoon light highlights the old village buildings and market umbrellas. The light spilled over onto the street, giving the illusion of a bright glare. The stone archway on the left framed the bright light of the next alley over. The shadows would be cool and blue, but not too dark. Generally, even the shadow areas of a cityscape with bright warm light benefits from the reflected light. The light tends to bounce around and provide ambient light even to the shadow areas. (Photographs do not record this reflected light by the way - that's why "from life" painting is so much better!) The color temperature scheme (warm light and cool shadow) and the shadow directional scheme (late afternoon backlighting) would be important supporting information.
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| Sunlight String |
This painting has been on and off the easel for four months so there were several stages of progress. I won't share them all but one thing I did was to use a sun string to guide the direction of my sunlight. I attached a long piece of wood so that it pointed high up above the large canvas. I tacked a long piece of string to the top of the wood. As I painted the lighted areas, I stretched the string tight and that showed the angle of the rays of light coming from my "pseudo sun" at the top of the wood. I wish I took a better photo but in the narrow photo, the wood and the string are somewhat visible. This method would be useful if you aren't painting on site, or if you were on site but the light changed dramatically before packing up.
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| Market Square |
I guess I like the anonymity of the figures. I also love the idea of supporting the growers, buying their fresh products and turning that into a culinary comfort for their family. So where is market square, who are these people and why two thoroughfares?
