Art Journal

Here's a story of how and why I ended up making a model or maquette for one of my paintings. This scene I was painting was one I saw from the top of a parking garage. The various shapes and shadows of the vents, ac units and pipes appealed to me and I thought it might make an interesting painting. 

I started out working from a photo I took at the time, making a b/w print of the photo to figure out my values with a medium gray marker and a dark marker. It was easier to work with a photo due to the perspective issues, rather than redrawing the whole thing,

and using the markers to map out a value range. 

Then I made a preliminary sketch using these three values to try to figure out my composition. I decided I didn't want much of the right side of the roof, and eventually decided on a square composition. After looking at the sketch I decided to eliminate that  front boxy unit.

The next step was making a small color sketch to figure out my color scheme, which I did with oil paint on a piece of Carton board.

After starting the actual painting, I realized I needed to change the composition to break up some of that plain gray roof area by adding something to the lower right and this meant inventing a boxy object to put in. I needed a color accent and a slight change to the composition and adding this item would solve the problem. Since this new box didn't exist in the original photo and it's shadow would fall on the tented section of the roof I needed to figure out how the shadow would lay. It wasn't something like a tree shadow that I could just fake so this is where the maquette comes in. I made a model of the front portion of the roof.  If I could duplicate the original shadows on part of the original roof then the shadow of the invented section would be accurate.  Here's a photo of the model and how it was lit ( with a flashlight).

Finally here's the final painting, Rooftops, 16 x 16.  This painting will go in the Governor's Show in Loveland in late April.

The annual Governor's Show in Loveland Colorado accepted my entry this year so I've been busy making new paintings for the show which opens on May 5th. Add in the super miserable cold winter we had this year and I have not been doing any plein air painting, but a lot of studio work.

Here's a notice for the Governor's Show