Trouble with Windows on Empire State Building watercolor

windows in 1st study

ABOVE: This is how the windows came out in the initial study I did for the Empire State Building painting I am working on. These buildings are medium depth between some close up street signals and the far away Empire State Building. In my photo there are a lot of reflections and details including black around the panes of glass etc. In this study I didn’t worry too much about them, concentrating more on the colors of the buildings. I thought they were ok, but wanted to improve for the final painting.

windows study

ABOVE: On this one I was actually trying on the windows. I did different things here and there to see what would work. But nothing really worked. Putting the dark around the windows made them look like cartoons. Plus that level of detail is more detail than the street signals have, and those are a lot closer. This seemed a mess, plus how am I agoing to get any suggestion of the various facades and shadows on the buildings?

Back to the windows, I thought I could get a China marker to blot them out and then paint over them to preserve their whiteness. I had decided against frisket because I could just as easy paint around them like I did in the first picture, plus I don’t like how frisket gives odd edges on smaller areas.

So this is what happened with the China marker:

windows with china marker

An interesting effect, but it’ll completely be out of place with those blotty edges ( I went in with a dark color around the china marker after the initial wash). Plus it looks kind of frantic and cartoon like and will be out of place with the rest of the painting.

I think I have to do another study similar to the first – not too much detail.

Anyway, here is where I am at with the painting so far; The ONE WAY sign is pointing to where these buildings are in the painting.

Empire State Building watercolor in progress

And Now For Something Completely Different…

News Boxes - mixed media from 1997

This is one of a series of about 50 mixed media paintings I did back in 1997 of scenes of Northampton, Mass. I am working on a book about them which will have plates of all the paintings and some text I am writing about my memories of living in Northampton back then and what went into making the paintings. I am going to post one of the images from that series every week or so. These are a little different from what I am doing nowadays but I thought it would still be fun to post them once in a while.

This one is called News Boxes and I think it was done with watercolor, highlighter, marker, correction fluid, maybe some other things as well.

Thoughts on the Study for the Empire State Building Painting

color study for painting

While working on the Empire State Building watercolor study, I took notes of the colors I had chosen and the steps I had taken in working on the painting. Once it was done I saw a few things I liked, a few things I didn’t, and a few things along the way that I knew I will need to do differently for the final painting. I like some of the things that happened with the larger building on the left, and came up with an idea on how to execute it better. The study above illustrates some of that process.

The first thing was figuring out a way to get the panes of glass to look ok, while preserving the white areas of the building surrounding the panes, AND get the shadow in there as well. It was just a series of steps to get this working ok. I also concentrated on finding a nice warm color for the windows to contrast with the cool sky. I am going to use Pthalo Blue for the sky. I found that by mixing Ultramarine Blue and Cad Yellow in the right amounts I was able to get a real nice grayish green color for the window. For the pole I wanted to use a cool gray to contrast with the windows and make the painting more interesting. I used a mix of pthalo blue and alizarin crimson and I think that is working nicely. On this study I will add the Pthalo Blue to the sky to see how it looks. I used my color mixing studies I made over the last few days to help me find the right colors (and temperatures) easily. This is a tool I didn’t have in my earlier painting where I was guessing or winging it as I went. I am seeing now that for the kind of finished painting I am looking to create, I need a lot more planning than I had thought.

A Few Thoughts on a Recent Painting

I spent the last few days doing some simple color mixing exercises to try and gain a better understanding of how the pigments I am using interact together. Nothing as elaborate as the color wheels at handprint.com (at least not yet anyway.)

I was looking at the painting I just did of Main Street Northampton and I really wasn’t happy with how the people had turned out. An I think I figured out why. When I first started the painting, I put in some simple 2 tone washes over the people (below top) and I really liked how that looked. But as I continued with the rest of the painting, I would go back to the people and I kept adding on top of what I had done with more and more paint until I had lost the fluidity of the first washes replaced with a muddiness (below bottom.)

Next time I work on some people in a scene like this I am going to try to avoid painting them until the end of the painting and then just put down one, two or three washes on them getting the values to work with the rest of the painting. That way they should maintain the lights, and not look too overworked. I think the bottom picture above might be more suitable for acrylics where I could keep building it up until I got things looking just right with the opaque paint.

Empire State Building watercolor study

empire state building watercolor study - finished

This study is done and it was invaluable for me to take the time to paint through this scene in this way. I uncovered a few ‘mistakes’ I made along the way with putting down a wash too early or one I didn’t need. This photo looks brighter than the original, and when looking at the original there are a few tonal values I plan to adjust for the final painting. For the sky I am going to make more uniform and close to the middle value of the sky. This will make the Empire State Building stand out more, and keep the top of it from getting lost in the sky (it does so more in real life than in the photo.) Same thing with the street pole – it looks lighter here. I want to do a better job with the mid buildings – make the windows better. Also I put a wash over the water tanks before I added details. That wash was too close in vale to where the ESB ended up being and it didn’t work out.

I like how the stop lights came out. I am working toward getting the completed paintings have good looking parts throughout and in another five paintings I think I should be approaching that, partly due to the experience of painting new ones, and by planning things out more and more.

watercolor study Empire State Building WIP-1

watercolor study empire state building

This is a study (8 x 10) I am doing  for an eventual larger  (12×18) watercolor I want to do. I am writing down everything I do – the order and what colors I used. This has been a good exercise as it is helping me see what works and what could be improved – and then making notes so that the final work will incorporate the best ideas. It is a bit deliberate, but that is good. I am trying for an economy of brush strokes.

Main Street Northampton, Watercolor WIP-4

More details added

This one is almost done. I added more detail on the storefronts on the left, and here and there throughout the painting. This painting was an attempt to try people and I think they came out ok – better initially and I think I worked them a little too much as it progresses, but not too bad for a first attempt.

I’m most happy with the buildings on the left and heading to the middle. They have just the right amount of realism that I am shooting for, and they don’t look overworked. There was a lot of tricky stuff in the middle with those weird lamps and odd black signs that I didn’t really understand until I had started in on painting them. That’s ok, just a good reminder to slow down and figure things out first.

Value-wise I ended up darkening the people way to much – there is a lot of missing sunlight on them. The darks on them are ok, but the lights aren’t light enough. I’ll set this one aside for now and start the Empire State Building painting tomorrow. That one will be fun.

Main Street, Northampton, Watercolor WIP-3

Main Street watercolor work in progress-3

I’m on vacation so I was trying to emulate the photorealists I read about in the book Realists at Work who all work on their paintings for 8 hours a day. I put in about 2+ hours in 2 sessions and that exhausted me. I don’t know how they can do 8 hours without going crazy. I was mostly trying to clean things up. As I progress with a painting I start seeing things I could have done differently earlier on, and by that time its too late to do anything about it. Watercolors are funny that way. With this one I would have left out all the people in the background and put the focus on the two guys in the middle. The buildings in the middle are really dark and it gets a little muddy in there.

Overall I like how some things are and not too crazy about others, but as I mentioned, with watercolor you have to make the best of it, and a reminder to plan things out even more. Figured out some good tricks. On my palette I put a dab of burnt umber and ultramarine next to each other in the mixing area and combine them on the fly to make varying shades of black or add to other colors for shadows. Easier than trying to set up a pot with black because it always runs out or the blue settles. I want to wrap this one up pretty quick because it was mostly to try painting people. I like how the buildings look. I am ready to get going on the Empire State Building painting.

Main Street Northampton, Watercolor, WIP-2

Main Street Northampton, Watercolor, work in progress

For some reason I wanted to start putting in the black areas so I mixed up some burnt umber and ultramarine and started putting it in. Then I felt like it was too dark in some areas and I had really jumped the gun, so I started lifting it off in some spots. Fortunately that mix of black lifts off easy, and it also blends well. So once I got through that episode I borrowed Heather’s 1 round which I haven’t used in a few weeks. I put in some of the fine lines around the windows and bricks and started to give a little more definition to the storefronts on the left. Next I filled in all the washes on the rest of the people and anything else I missed like the bushes in the planters. Added some shadow – my favorite parts of any painting. Lot of work to do on this but I like how it is turning out so far.

Main Street Northampton, Watercolor WIP-1

Main Street Northampton Watercolor - Under Painting

With this one I am having an fun time conceptualizing how I am going to paint things before I paint them. That is in part due to the thumbnail sketch I did and also to a greater awareness of glazing principles. For all the brick buildings I put a wash down of burnt umber and then glazed over with different mixes of aliz crimson & Ultramarine blue. I’ll put in the window ledges with an opaque pigments later on.

I put a bunch of frisket down and discovered that the frisket pulls up pencil when you remove it. I had to redo a lot of the drawing. Those white blobs are air conditioners. It is easier putting down a big wash with the frisket.

I am trying to keep all the values low as I go, and wait on the details, but it is easy to get pulled into an area and keep working it. I couldn’t resist working on the green bricks, because they seemed so easy. The real thing with this painting is the people and I found they aren’t as hard as I thought they would be so far. Each part of them are really just 2 values. What is in the light and what is in the shadow. Its more a question of getting the shape right. I’m surprised more than anything because I think they are coming out a lot better than I hoped. Although I don’t like how the lady on he left is looking – but she was the first one I did so there was more room for error. By the time I got to the other ones I had a better handle on it.

A lot of the storefronts are black, so once I get some more of the washes in there I will start adding the darker values and that should make it start to pop. I need to remember to keep the whites white and to not put too much detail in the buildings.