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.