Saturday on Max: Accepting the challenge.

Saturday on Max   14" X18" Acrylic on Canvas Panel

The story behind this painting began last Wednesday.  I sold the Downtown at Daybreak  painting last week.  This left a spot to fill at the B2 (Squared) wine Bar.  I was encouraged to do another cityscape so... 

I spent the better part of my Wednesday attempting another cityscape.  It did not go well.  However, as with most paintings I learned a few things along the way.  I was also reminded of a couple of things.  The most important being that you can never compromise on the composition.  I thought I could compose the painting without precisely measuring the angles.  I was wrong.  No matter what I tried the painting was just a little off.  I had to scrap the entire painting and choose a new subject.  So Saturday I chose this  challenging scene of a Max train going up the downtown transit mall.  I had shied away from this because I wasn't sure how the  Max train would end up looking.  But I really liked the scene.
  I thought I would start by painting some of the train to get some practice with the values and angles.  So I began to paint over the last painting.  As it progressed I realized that it was going well enough that I should continue.  By Sunday morning I had committed to this version.  So what had started as an exercise painting over the last panel  ended up being a finished painting.
On a side note, I took photos of the process.  At one point I washed the entire top of the painting with white to get rid of the painting beneath. This created a very interesting fog like effect with the buildings in the background of the old painting creating ghostly images and the train emerging into the foreground.  I liked it so much I almost left it as it was, but I was determined to try to finish the scene.  And I thought I could always go back later, wash it out and achieve the same effect.  Later as I was putting in the trees, I decided to try and go back to the wash.  This didn't work because the trees were now part of the painting and the effect was not believable enough.
Unfortunately the photos I took of this effect have been lost forever.   When I shut off my old camera, the lense refused to retract into the body.  Long story short,  the camera was in my pocket, and when I went to change clothes today, I stepped on the lense and effectively killed the thing.  The photos are in the camera's internal memory (another result of the dying camera) and it will not power up.  So new painting, and new camera today.  Both were long overdue.

Detail.

Not a lot to say...

It must sound (or look) like I just cut and paste the same comment every time I post something these days, but I still feel the need to make the excuse...
I have been working so many hours lately that this small painting sat on my desk for weeks before I did a few more things to it and decided to post it.  I'm not quite finished with it.  I just got tired of feeling like it should be done.  Initially it was going to be a quick impressionistic study, and it is for the most part, but  I ended up having to do more with it than I intended. 
   Things are not all work, however.  I was able to take a long weekend trip to the coast with my wife last week and we had a fantastic time.  And of course I have squeezed in some golf...
I have found that if I don't start working on a painting in the morning, the distractions of the day seem to prevent me from doing anything at all.  

Urban Landscape Trio B Squared Wine Bar

The trio of  Cityscapes are complete.   They might need a little more positioning, but for now...at least they are up.

My wonderful wife Lecia and buddy Zach helped position the paintings

I hung the final of the three Urban Landscapes I did for the B2 Wine bar in the Pearl. 
This little gem in the Pearl District just opened this month.  My  wonderful wife Lecia and  my good friend  and golf guru Zach Welch gave me a hand in the positioning.  Now I just have to move the lighting a little more to center.  I have one more to do for the wine bar, but according to Zach, there has been interest shown in the center painting already, so with a little luck I could be doing even more. 
The coffee shop B2 Coffee Haus, which is located a few doors up in the same building features 8 of my watercolor paintings as well.  I'm not going to lie about this.  When I went in to hang this third painting, I was stilll very pleased with how the other small painting came out.  Usually there will be something that I want to change about a painting, but this one still suited my eye.
Of course you can always get better, and I will.  However it is necessary to be satisfied with a result.  That's what keeps me going.  That and being able to see my work somewhere other than in my painting space.
  I have been wanting to paint  more, but time hasn't allowed it lately.  This makes for some frustrating days.  Hopefully this will change soon. When faced with such a small amount of time and so many choices of what to do,  the brain will often choose to do nothing.  That's the battle I'm facing now.  I have so many ideas, but I know I don't have time to do even one full painting, so I end up not even getting started on one.

Cityscape: New Lessons learned

As I read through the original post about this painting I realized how my opinion had changed.  So I decided to update what I think about this painting. 
It is interesting to see how my opinion can change about my own work even though I have left it alone.  This painting grew on me more and more as the weeks went by.  I began to look at all the positive things rather than where I had struggled with it.  So when I look at it today, I am satisfied and comfortable with it.  There will always be things that you feel you could have done better, but at the end of the day, if you achieve the visual result you wanted, you have suceeded.

Busy Saturday

I'm pretty tired, but I felt the need to post this paintng.  This is the larger painting I've been working on. Seeing it online seems to help me decide where I need to make corrections.  I ran out of natural light to photograph this so it didn;t come out very clear.  I was careful to prepare the lines in this one, yet I still struggled to make it work.  Finally after piddling around with it I decided to go bold and try whatever happened to fall on the canvas.  That;s when I made the most progress.  Sometimes being too deliberate handcuffs me. I will try to get a better photo tomorrow.