Working title: Stone Comfort
16 x 20 ", Acrylic on Canvas
30 January 2008
Okay, so it's not Acrylic on Canvas yet. It's only Charcoal on Canvas. But there'll be acrylic on there soon, I promise.
This is the sketch for one of a series of paintings that I'm currently engaged on...this expands on some symbols from Balance, and is a little segue into a painting that I have planned.
7 February 2008
Tonight I picked this up after some other painting and blocked in a few things.
17 February 2008
It's a couple of sessions later on this painting. I repainted the pyramid, put grey and black into the train and sky, and blocked in the rest of the areas. I covered the tracks and the left background with washes of paint (acrylic thinned with water rather than with acrylic medium) just to get them covered quickly.
I've now gotten rid of the white of the canvas most everywhere. Having a lot of canvas still exposed tends to throw off my color and value sense. So now I can start making final color choices and/or see if the things I have blocked in are doing what I want them to. The thing that immediately jumps out at me is that the background on the left (lightish red area) needs to be much darker...that'll probably be my first adjustment.
The red is mostly underpainting for areas that I plan to have green in the final image.
8 June 2008
I worked a little bit on this painting today after a more lengthy session on Nuggets.
I massed in a bit of detail on what will probably be a bunch of trees on the left, repainted the background mountains on the right, and fiddled with the train a little.
12 July 2008
Today I redid the ground level, firming up the path for the train, and did a little bit of work on the background and on the trees/bushes on the left.
8 April 2009
I picked this up again after over a year. I worked some more color in and tightened the drawing in places. There have been no major compositional changes, and right now I don't really think I'll make any. I'm happy with blue making its presence felt, and with the new yellow (Turner's) I used for the right-hand hilly area. I'm becoming more thoughtful about introducing new colors to a painting; I used to be fairly wanton with that. Maybe one day I'll have paintings with harmonious colors.
There's still plenty to do with this; I need to figure out what to do about the flat red area and train track. I also need to sharpen the drawing of the bird, and bring detail to the figure. There's also supposed to be a guard rail and some flowers...
9 April 2009
Well, I greened over the flat red area. I've just been painting green tonight. It seems a bit colorful and harsh, particularly compared to the other regions (I wanted the background hills to be one of the more-colorful areas, so I'll have to tone it down a bit. I've already started doing that, by putting yellow glaze overtop of it. I guess I want it to look more arid around the pyramid...I may have to start over with a different green mixture if more glazing doesn't really fix it.
I'm still happy I got most of the red removed...although I may need another coat of it because I want some of it to show through in the final version of the green area. I'm feeling like I'm progressing, and if that's not happening in the painting, then at least it's happening in my thinking about it.
11 April 2009
This is after a couple of short sessions where I just glazed the green area. I'm still not sure if the glazing is leading anywhere.
15 April 2009
Today I decided to work on improving the values and contrasts. I started by reshaping the bushes/trees on the left and removing the little guard rail that was left. I continued with the pyramid, whose dark side seemed too light. I also worked on getting darks into the pyramid base, and on solidifying the figure inside. I also defined the bird a little better.
After a little break, I went back to put a shadow of the pyramid on the pyramid base and grass. To get a proper rhythm of darks going, I also darkened some dark spots in the bushes/trees, and repainted the locomotive. The trees will need further darkening. I did a little more work on the interior, and on the grass that isn't in shadow.
Things are looking much nicer to me, now; I'm quite happy with the day's progress. But there's still a lot to do, including dealing with the train tracks, repainting the guard rail, painting the flowers, and giving the hills on the right some atmospheric perspective.
09 June 2009
Finally I pulled this one off the shelf again and went after the hills on the right, giving them and the nearby sky more vibrant colors.
In my sketchbook, I also sketched out the new placement for the posts of the guard rail and what I think the track will end up looking like. My plan is to try to bring those details in next time I work on this.