Somewhere along the line, I decided to use the last page of my sketchbook to revisit the subject matter of the first page. It would be the clearest way to demonstrate to myself what I had learned since I started the sketchbook on September 22 of last year. I did the painting above on August 12, so around 11 months of painting, reading, taking online classes and fighting my fears, ridiculous as those may be.
So here's the photo. It's a storefront in Durango, Colorado. Obviously, not taken with any thought of artistry. It was taken to document the place. As near as we can tell from records, that was the site of a bottling company started and run by my wife's great grandfather. It's the building to the left of the awnings. I look at the white wall of the alley and imagine it to be the original wall that her ancestor touched.
And here's my first attempt. I had watched a ton of painting videos, especially those of James Gurney. I built an easel to sit on a tripod just like his. I bought the same paints he used and the same brushes from the videos. He worked so methodically and logically that I felt well prepared to start. Of course, I was missing that key ingredient of talent, and practice, and experience.
So when I hit the last page, I examined the photo with more experienced eyes. The most obvious lesson that came to mind is that an artist doesn't have to be a camera. I could move objects to simplify the composition or ignore them. I also didn't have to paint the whole photo. The things that interested me were my great grandfather-in-law's building, the mountain and the sky. So I decided to turn my sketchbook and its side and make a vertical composition.
The next decision was to change the time of day. I decided to attempt early morning, with a rosy sky and the building partially in shadow. So I found some paintings of early morning and tried to pick out the color schemes that would work. If I didn't do this, I would have been starting at a disadvantage. A midday photo with a lack of shadows and nothing special about it. Plus, I wanted to try this as an artistic challenge to keep me interested. So I did a little scrap paper color sketch to figure out the "colors of morning" that I'd use.
So on closer examination, the car was actually red. Also the building was much more complicated than it appeared in the original painting. It definitely had to be simplified but I felt it needed a little more detail since it would be the center of attention in the new painting.
My intent was to make the values of the mountain be closer to those in the sky. That would push them farther into the distance or shroud them in fog. The little scrap sketch arguably does this better than the final but the value is too dark and a bit muddy. The point was to clearly make the building the focus on the picture.
I warmed the white of the trim with yellow to suggest a warm light of the sun and opted for a gentle gradation of light to dark on the building instead of adding a harsh line of a shadow cast by an unseen building.
On the whole, I was fairly pleased. It wasn't the home run of the mountain stream but I approached it with a plan that I mostly carried out. I had certainly improved over the year. But looking at it for this post, weeks later, I see that the mountain should be a lighter value to blend with the sky. The building doesn't pop out as much as it should. I think if I made the top trim a bit brighter and the trees behind it a little darker and cooler, there would be a greater sense of depth.
I scanned it into Photoshop to test my theories. I also brightened up the top of the storefront, not just the trim. It would've been nice to have caught those the first time around but it shows my thinking is on the right track. Onto a new sketchbook!
--Tad
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