Cafe Intervention

This is the start of the painting. Here is where I start to change how this painting will look. The background is too vivid which doesn't show aerial perspective of distance. I will change this to blue/gray hues. Your eye goes directly to the tire on the truck. The main focus should be on the people. Next, the color of her dress is too garish and gaudy, this happened because I did follow one of my basic rules, limit the colors and blend them. Well I am on my way with this painting. It will be exciting to see how it will change tomorrow.

Cafe Intervention

Here is the original sketch, it was put on with permanent marker and then covered with two coats of white gesso. Through trial and error I found that the sketch has to been coated or it will show through and require a lot paint to stop it. But if you are like me and need to see your sketch for awhile this is really nice. The marker sketch will be completely covered usually by the time the underpainting is done.

Cafe Intervention

Necessity or procrastination, could be the motivation for what might be my "Manic Panic" phase of painting. Not having a current painting to show for critique night at the monthly meeting of the Waukesha Creative Art League (WCAL) I went into this phase and produced "Cafe Intervention". This is a 22 by 30 inch watercolor on Arches 400 lb cold press paper.

This watercolor is the sketch for an oil painting entry into this year's Wisconsin Regional Art Program (WRAP). So far I've sketched this painting onto canvas (36 by 48 inches) and the underpainting is done. This is where I start to change the color composition. I will be posting the progress of this oil painting, which should help to keep me on track. I already do not like the color of her dress and the vividness of the background scene. The dress color wasn't a mix from the color palette I use and it really looks garish. Some aerial perspective is needed for the background to make the street scene appear to be distant. We will see where this goes, it will be interesting to see how much it changes before it's completed. I will be posting photos of the progress.