Street Scenes — April 2005 Tutorial

[Yorky]

A STREET SCENE

Well folks, on the strength of my “Fernie BC WIP” street scene, CharM has persuaded me to set the task for the April Classroom – A Street Scene.

NOTE: As the tutorial is image intensive and best kept together for future reference, it is intended that another “Homework” thread will be started on 1st April for all responses.

This tutorial is split into sections and can be printed out by clicking on “Thread Tools” at the top and selecting “Show Printable Version”

Why paint a street scene? Sometimes we need to capture the feel of a place, sometimes there may be historic buildings or as in this case a wonderful old town feel and a beautiful setting. I will show the various stages in composing a painting, laying out a framework, and painting the scene which at first sight may look too complicated to attempt.

1. COMPOSITION:

Here’s my photo reference, taken on a visit to Fernie (which is in British Columbia incidentally, not Alberta) with Pampe in June 2003 to meet with Rich Williams and do a little plein air watercolours.

You may wish to start with a different reference photograph, but ensure there is no lens distortion in the photograph and wall corners are vertical as this can affect the perspective.



The composition is not ideal, and requires simplifying. This can be done by simply ignoring items of street furniture , vehicles or people, or moving things around to help the composition. No matter how good the photograph there are always details obscured and sometime a little imagination is required to complete a building elevation. If you are setting out to capture a street scene with a painting in mind, it is best to take several photographs to capture details which will feature in the painting.

As an example of simplification, I have done a considerable amount of photo manipulation in Photoshop Elements to improve the composition. Here is the result (a larger file will be placed in the RIL )



I have removed the pickup in the centre of the road and the nearest car on the right, added a red truck in the distance, simplified the sky, altered the man’s shirt colour, removed many of the wires crossing the road, cloned in the building on the right and cropped the left of the photograph a little. When we begin to paint we will simplify even further, leaving out a lot of excess detail.

The first module of the class will involve establishing the perspective.

REMINDER : Please post all questions and work in the “Homework” thread, which will become available on 1st April.

[Yorky]

2. HANDLING PERSPECTIVE

There is pronounced geometric and aerial perspective in the photograph and the technicalities have been discussed before in the Watercolour Handbook

So let’s start by establishing the horizon and locating the vanishing points on our reference photo by drawing along the horizontals on the face of the buildings for transfer to our paper. This is done by drawing along the roof lines, window and door heads to locate the vanishing points which lie on the horizon.



Note the vanishing point for the left and right sides of the street is the same, as the buildings are conveniently parallel. The horizon line in this case passes through the heads of the pedestrians as the street is level with the viewer. This can vary if the street is sloping toward or away from the viewer – the horizon being a level line at the height of the viewer. I have also indicated that all verticals are vertical – it is rare that vertical perspective needs to be taken into account, and that the sides of the buildings, which are at a slight angle to the viewer should strictly slope to vanishing points which are a some distance off each side of the photograph. As the sides of the buildings are almost at 90 degrees to the viewer I have chosen to ignore them If the buildings were at a more pronounced angle then they would have to slope to vanishing points off the paper.

If the street was curved, or buildings were not parallel, then each building would have a different vanishing point, but they would all lie on the horizon line as in this photograph of Knaresborough, Yorkshire which is the subject of a separate thread:



Having established the horizon line and the vanishing point/s, on the reference, transfer them to the paper by a process of measuring the photo and scaling up to establish a basic framework on our paper for our sketch. The horizon line is used as a basis for all the horizontal and vertical lines, and your long ruler and vanishing point to put in the perspective lines, pivoting one end of the ruler on the VP and drawing in the roof lines, window heads etc.

I have to admit it looks very complicated, but if we take it slowly, feature by feature it will prove do-able. In fact it will be much easier than it looks. I suggest for this scene you use a minimum paper size of 16 x 12 inches or larger – a half sheet would be better and make the drawing in of detail much easier.

It is not intended to cramp anyone’s style here, but to show how to get an accurate framework with correct perspective, and how to approach adding detail.

If you are not confident at a double sided street, you could try an oblique photograph of one side of a street with a single main vanishing point such as this one of River Street, Manistee, Michigan:


Note: there is also a right hand vanishing point for the sides of the shop roofs which is off the paper..

A larger copy is in the RIL here.



3. SCALING UP

Accuracy is important when doing your sketch and although the easiest way is to take the photo down to the copy shop and have it enlarged to the size of your paper, using a light box or transfer paper to transfer it to your paper, scaling up is more flexible and can cater for any paper size.

Here I have printed out the reference photo and laid it on my 16x12 Langton pad. The diagonal ruler is used to ensure that the proportions of the painting are the same as the reference. This is important. The scale factor is calculated measuring the frame on the pad then the width of the photo and dividing one by the other I get a scale factor in my case 1.33. Everything I measure on the photo will therefore be multiplied by 1.33 to scale it up to fit the paper. I use millimetres and a pocket calculator as they make the mathematics easier.



The next step is to locate the horizon line, vanishing point and the corners of the buildings on the photograph, and by measuring from the edge of the photo and multiplying by the scale factor establish these points on the paper. Once the important corners are established, vertical, horizontal or perspective lines can be drawn as appropriate. I use a rolling ruler for this which makes it easy to draw parallel lines. In this way the framework for the buildings is plotted on the paper. You can also use a set square and a ruler to draw parallel lines as shown
here

Note: I show an easy method for getting the line of the mountain top correct by measuring along and down from a horizontal line and scaling up. Normally I would put this in by eye.



In this example all horizontal lines of buildings facing the street slope to the same Vanishing Point.

Here’s my resulting framework. Note there are no details on the buildings at this stage, nor any street furniture, people or cars they will be added building by building as we go along. Note: I was a little heavy with the pencil so that they would show up in the photograph. I added the sky before going any further, I always do this on landscapes as a horrible sky can ruin hours of work. I used a mixture of French Ultramarine Blue and Cobalt Blue, turning the paper upside down which makes following the edge of buildings or mountains easier and often results in a slightly graduated wash, darker at the top.



REMINDER : Please post all questions and work in the “Homework” thread.

[Yorky]

4. ADDING DETAIL:

Next we will begin sketching in each building with sufficient detail to allow the buildings to be painted working from left to right. If possible, work in small sections.



Now apply washes to the buildings, and paint in the incidental detail, leaving texture and shadows etc until later. It helps to boost and vary the colours in some cases to separate the buildings and create more interest.



Here is the left side of the street completed:


Now we start sketching in the right hand side, using perspective lines to help position the cars:


Starting to paint the buildings:


When the buildings are completed we mask out the lamp columns ready for painting the background:

5. THE BACKGROUND:

We now move on to the backdrop of mountains and trees, where aerial perspective makes the colours paler and bluer. I first painted in the larger snow areas in very pale grey (Cobalt Blue + Light Red, the small flecks of snow will be left by painting around them. Now to paint in a wash of darker French Ultramarine Blue + LR + a little Permanent Rose on the mountains, using downward strokes, indicating gully lines to be modelled later by adding shadow lines. Reaching the bottom of the bare rock we change to a pale mixture of FUB + Lemon yellow for the grass and continue down to road level.

The background tree slopes are painted in a darker FUB +LY first using a fine brush to give a spiky effect to the tops to indicate conifers, and increasing the brush size to continue down, leaving the ski runs clear.

Now it is time to paint in the nearer trees at the right side and across the road end, using a small brush to paint the branches then filling in with mixtures of greens varying from FUB + Cadmium Yellow for the nearest trees, gradually moving on to FUB + LY. I have to admit that the result here is not as satisfactory as in my half sheet version.




6. THE FINISHING TOUCHES:

As is often the case with landscapes, this stage of the painting looks rather “flat” so it now time to remove the masking fluid to the lamps and add the finishing touches. We start with more shadows to the mountain gullies and pale shadows to some of the snow areas, moving onto the foreground to add texture and shadow to the street and final touches to the buildings where appropriate. In this case the sun was high overhead and in front of the viewer, so the shadows will be quite short. Finally we add the white gouache lettering to the shop and theatre signs (I use a ruling pen for this) and using a rigger to indicate a few wires crossing the street.

The final 16 x 12 result is:


As compared with my previous Fernie painting which was 20 x 15:


CONCLUSION:

What appears to be a very difficult task can be achievable if taken slowly, giving a quite acceptable result. Comparing this painting on a 16 x 12 Langton pad with my first Fernie street scene which was a half sheet of Saunders Waterford, it is clear that detail was much easier to do on the larger painting.

REMINDER : Please post all questions and work in the “Homework” thread.