Saturday, February 27, 2010

South Grain Elevators (Part I)

When I saw this black/white photo on Bill Church's blog, I was very excited! These grain elevators used to be on the south side of Moscow and were torn down a few years back. I had always wanted to paint them, but didn't take the time to take a photo. However, I wanted them in color and with more light. So I took some liberties (they call it 'artistic license', I guess) and used the colors from the pea mill paintings. I hope you enjoy seeing the progress.
Sorry about the quality of the photos here - but anyway this is the rough sketch on Arches 140 lb paper. It's about 20 X 22. You might be able to see where I've put the Mask-It, a kind of thick liquid which protects the areas I want to keep white.
This is after an hour or so - the initial washes are in and I've started to focus in on the highest tower. As you can see, I amped up the light coming from the right.
A another hour or more and I've worked from the center out mostly to the right. These buildings had so many different textures of metal and wood, even varying on the same building! Then all those great exhaust ports (I think) like so many nostrils, helping the buildings breathe. And check out those little sheds on the very top!
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