Cityscape Painting Part 1

We camped in the grassy median while painting this scene.

I took my class to the historic district of downtown Provo, Utah to paint buildings this week. I began a scene of my own the first day and I have to admit the prospect of capturing buildings was much more challenging than I expected. Some of the things that I realized while attempting to paint my chosen scene are as follows:

Blocking in the basic shapes

1- The drawing aspect necessary to capture architectural elements is critical. You must take extra time and care in your observational drawing in order to make sure that your proportions and perspective are correct.
It became very important to capture  the vanishing perspective of the horizontal planes as well as keeping the verticals absolutely plumb.

2- Accurate perceptions of color and value are more difficult. The addition of many different local colors and values in buildings pose a challenge that is not so obvious in landscape painting. For instance, I noticed that the shadow side of a white building in my scene was nearly the same value as the sunlit dark gray facade right next to it. Color and value must be accurately observed and mixed in order to capture the right feel of solidity in your structures.

3- It takes much longer (at least for me right now) to paint a city scene on location, mostly because of the above two reasons.

Progress after an hour and 45 minutes.

I found myself really enjoying the challenge of painting a city scene and look forward to finishing this one up next week. I suspect there may be more urban painting in my future.  I'll post a picture of how it turned out when it's done.

Establishing The Shadow Family

I lay in the shadow family first

The more I paint, the more I am convinced that establishing an effective value pattern is the most important aspect of a successful picture. This can be quite a challenge when painting out of doors. The past several sessions of outdoor painting with my students has been evidence of this. I've been reading a lot these days about plein air painting including Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting as well as from Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light And Color by Kevin D Macpherson.

In the book Macpherson advocates simplifying the value pattern into to "families" consisting of the light family and the shadow family. The light family is anything that the light source illuminates and the shadow family contains areas of the composition that are not directly illuminated. In order to create a clear matrix or value pattern, keep the two groups distinct and separate from one another. You can do this by remembering that the lightest area of the shadow family wants to remain darker than the darkest area of the light family.

By following this rule, you will not intermingle your value pattern with confusing lights and darks and your masses will be distinct. Of course this can be a challenge when the light is overcast. In this situation, you will rely solely on the local values of each mass within the composition and plan your value arrangement accordingly. Our painting session ended up more overcast than sunny so my light and shadow families are not as distinct, but the light and dark value pattern persists and the painting works for the most part because of this. I spent about an hour and 40 minutes on this study.

George Bellows' Limited Palette

Stag Night at Sharkey's - George Bellows, 1909

George Bellows (1882-1925) was an American painter associated most closely with "The Eight" and "The Ashcan School". Both groups of painters advocated depicting contemporary American society. He is perhaps best known for his paintings of boxing scenes including "Stag Night at Sharkey's".

In black and white the structure of the painting is maintained powerfully.

I have always been impressed with his effectively designed value patterns as well as his understated but beautiful limited color palettes. The diagram below of some of Bellows' work shows his limited color selections for each piece as well as the value range for each tone.

Click to Enlarge

Bellows demonstrates here that there is no need for outrageous color or even a wide color variety when effective value and color patterns are employed-color becomes secondary to value structure. I think the simple solutions are often the best when it comes to value pattern and color palette choices.

This concept previously on LNA

Thanks to Bill Perkins for sharing this diagram with me (and now you).
Upcoming Bill Perkins workshops

Notes From Bill Perkins Workshop

Our workshop group on the final day. I am next to Bill (center back with my arm against the wall)

If you have been reading this blog lately, you have noticed a few entries regarding the Bill Perkins Color workshop that I attended a few weeks back So much was covered that it is impossible to give a full recap here without multiple posts. I will continue to break down the most interesting concepts from the workshop in future posts, but today, I wanted to run down a few tips from Bill that I scribbled down in my sketchbook.

ALWAYS squint to see value, but NEVER squint to see color

The value [of a color] cannot be quantified on a color wheel rather it is based on perception.

Large masses reflect more light than small masses, therefore they appear lighter than small masses, because they indeed are. Consequently, small masses (such as the nose on a face)are darker.

Highlights are the color of the light source

Light areas are the local color plus the color of the light source

When lit, objects of mid value create potential for greater range of contrast than objects of either light or dark value. Mid value has the highest value range.

Some of these concepts I had heard before, and they all rang true, but having them all put together in the context of a workshop was a really valuable experience for me. I hope these tips will help you as well.

 I apologize for not posting as frequently of late, I am in the middle of a really big project which I can't spill about. Someday after it becomes public, I'll share. Thanks for being patient. I will post as much as I can in the interim.

Maintaining Tonal Zones

Among concepts that were learned or solidified at the Bill Perkins workshop I attended over the weekend was the principle of maintaining value relationships and patterns. In his explanation, Bill focused on identifying major values and then translating them into separate value ranges. Using my painting for this first exercise as an example, I will try to break it down simply.

First Bill had us analyze the values on the model and then define within our study those specific ranges. Each tonal block was kept separate from the next, but also allowing for variations of tone within it's own block . As the diagram  I created above shows, all other values that did not fall into one of the value ranges or tonal blocks were eliminated.

This process allows each value range to stand as a separate and distinct shape that cannot be confused by competing values from another tonal block. The result was a painting that held together strongly  because it made a clear value statement.

I had heard variations of this theory explained before but never with such clarity. I then focused my efforts for the rest of the workshop on translating this tonal zone concept into the color studies that we did.  Most of the 16 studies we painted were done in 40 minutes or less and since we were focusing on capturing a color statement, likeness and drawing accuracy took a back seat. It was frustrating to not have time to "draw", but overall a very valuable three days. More about Bill's color theory explanations in another post.