Hi Everyone, I've had some requests to put up a demo of my painting process. This is my first demo and I probably have too many steps, but I will post all of them because it may help to show how it develops better than I can. This is a scene of Fort Snelling viewed across the Minnesota River. The smaller tributary is the Mississippi river. This is a confluence of the two rivers. Here's a photo of the scene
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First step is always the same for me. I start with a very quick sketch. If the composition doesn't work in this small sketch, no amount of slick painting or massive technique will save it. It's better to know now than two hours from now when I've been beat up by the canvas
. The sketch is a quickie and is all about composition and balance. An unequal distribution of sizes and shapes.
As you can see I've condensed the scene quite a bit. Fort Snelling has been picked up and moved far to the left. There was just too much unnecessary foliage, so it's gone. It's always about what makes the painting better and it's not necessary to be a slave to what's in front of you.
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Here's my rough in with a few of the darkest darks. I tone my canvas with thinned down yellow ocher. This is a great way to keep your paintings from becoming too dark. If you let little pieces of this underpainting show through in spots, you can give your painting a lot of life. Don't do this in the distant hills since yellow is the first thing to drop out in receding landscape. Cover all of you underpainting there.
I usually only draw in my larger shapes with Cad Red Med thinned with turp, but since this scene involved architecture, I lightly sketched in the Fort and some of the other shapes. This is the time to be critical of your drawing. I've seen Scott Christensen draw with his brush and wipe it off over and over and over again until he had his shapes different and interesting. That made a big impression on me and I never forgot it!
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Now it's about laying in the darks, comparing one to another.
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...continuing the lay in. Just getting the values right at this point. I can't stress enough the importance of comparing the values to each other. I've heard a statistic that 90% of failed PA paintings are due to faulty values!
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...now I begin to put in the light areas and the flat planes. This include the shoreline and the water. Also I've begun to put the shadowed side of the Fort. Every so often the fort fires it's cannons for the crowds that flock there for a little bit of history. Luckily they aren't firing them in my direction.
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...my initial lay in is complete. If i was going for a looser sketch, I could stop here. From this study I could do a larger painting in the studio. I'm wanting more of a finished painting, so I'll keep going. There are no details in the Fort and I was playing with putting in a flag, so I roughed one in.
Nothing here was finished first, it all came together at the same pace. Don't obsess about any one area of a painting. Let it all happen together.
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I decide I don't like the flag, so I remove it, sorry.
I've put in some of the clouds at this point. I'm also sneaking up on adding detail to the fort. I'm constantly adjusting values to create the light effect I'm seeing. I also put in a few tree trunks in the foreground to see if the trees are reading right.
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....the refining continues. Bringing things together at the same time. Don't concentrate and finish any one area. Orchestrate it.
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....adding detail to the fort, but not too much. Also tweaking the light side of the trees.
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...adding tree trunks to the shoreline and further defining the leaves . The violet reflection of the sky in the water is taken care of. I've darkened the shadowed wall in the fort. We're coming down the home stretch now!
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I haven't put it in yet, but there is a bridge behind the Fort that connects to the hill on the right side. The reason I haven't put it in is because I'm not sure if I want this to be a period piece set in the 1800's (no bridge), or do I make it a current day painting, and include that bridge. I opt for adding the bridge since it will help to connect the composition and bring keep your eye from wandering off the top.
Here's the finished painting:
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And finally, here are a couple of closeups:
Thanks for stickin' with me!!
Happy Painting, Steve
Thanks for doing this, and showing the detail at each step. I learned something at each step. What amazed me is how you kept going. I would have been pretty happy with myself at panel 6, just after you removed the flag (good decision, IMO). Even at panel 9, I'd be patting myself on the back and saying, good job. But the additional decoration in the last really makes it come alive.
Linear Mode
