Start to new painting

This is a particularly ambitious and personal painting for me. The idea for it has been brewing for sometime now but I put off attempting to paint it, in part because I felt as though I didn't have the skills and understanding yet to do what I wanted to do. The subject matter isn't new for me (I've painted fragments of it in my A Painting a Day blog) but some of the ideas behind the inspiration for it are. I suspect I'll be working on it on and off for the next few months.

It's about 40 x 60 inches. Here's my start:

Main Street Station painting, up close

click the plus sign in the upper right to go to full screen.

fini

I'll post some final thoughts, as well as a high res image, in the coming days. 

Sessions 12-15

here's a widget that will let you see the painting up close. The image is distorted because of the off angle of the photo. I'm still working all over, sketching in some street signs and light posts and solidifying some of the larger structures. Lots of loose-ends. I haven't done much with the MSS building since the earlier sessions but I plan on working on it again soon.

sessions 8-11

I've been laying pavement and building cars. I like the two cars with their headlights on because it suggests dawn and the beginning of a new day. In the white minivan is a women with a white knit cap in the passenger seat lit by the sun. I've found myself thinking a lot about the many cross country trips my family took while my Dad was in the Marines-- those long hours of staring out at the passing countryside and at the other travelers sealed off in their own worlds. As those other travelers floated by my window I use to always make up stories about them; who they were and where they were going. As I paint these cars I think about the travelers inside: perhaps in one is a family who drove through the night to get home, perhaps in another is a business man listening to the radio, or a woman lost in thought not even noticing that the sun just came up.

I'm currently deciding where to place other vehicles in the composition.

sessions 6 and 7

I've been working all over, but mostly the in lower left quadrant. What has been an unexpectedly enjoyable section for me is the line of bare trees along the highway. When the rising sun hit them they became luminous and I think I'm finally beginning to get that sense. It has been a challenging painting problem because of the temptation to get overly picky with the branches and thus create an expectation of pickiness in the rest of the painting. So I've stay focused on the light and, well, seeing the forest from the trees. I'll get some detailed picts next time. The painting is a bit looser than it appears here. Click the image to enlarge it.

session 4 and 5

click to enlarge

Once I got the surface mostly covered I stood back and breathed a sigh of relief-- you never know exactly how an image will scale-up until you see it big. I suppose this is one reason Constable use to make full-scale (10-foot) preparatory oil "sketches." Anyway, I'm happy that the composition holds up well at this size.

Once I readjust some drawing I'll go back in and begin to clarify and strengthen this initial layer of paint. There is a nice airiness to the piece so far, partially because of it's looseness and I have to be careful not to lose this feeling as I make my refinements.

As I look at it now, the right half is kind of Diebenkorn-esque.