Old Town Warrenton Demo

The weather has finally warmed up and so I spent the weekend painting outside in  Old Town in Warrenton.
I spotted this scene earlier in the year and finally got a chance to paint it.

With buildings like this I take a little extra time with the drawing in the beginning. I know I only have about an hour and a half because the sun is moving from right to left in the scene and by that time the front of the building will be in sunlight.

Because of the angle of the light my rig is in full sunlight here. When you have a situation like this it is important to focus on the relative differences between color and value.

After the drawing I start blocking in the large masses leaving out details and focusing on the light and shadow of the scene. I go for an average of the color and value or a compliment to the secondary shapes I will add later. I try for the simplest most elegant solution to the problem. If I make the right choice my painting will look detailed from a distance and simple up close which is the effect I'm going for.

The sky started to cloud up a little so I made sure I blocked that in in case it changed too much and I lost my light completely.




Once all the big shapes are in I start on the secondary shapes within the larger masses. Painting the larger areas first gives me more information to judge the shifts between them and the smaller details. At this point I am still keeping things simple noting plane and hue changes .


The sun has started to come around the red building now but I still have enough time to clean up edges and finish the white building, railings and smallest details before the light changes completely.
The last things I do are to design the foreground bank of grasses and clover and sky and call it finished.