Painting Process - Cranford Church

I have a show coming up in Cranford so I did a few local pieces. This one hundred year old church covered in cedar shingles caught my attention. Its got some intriguing geometry and great contrast in the trim that makes the gothic windows stand out.

The process for making the painting is below:

First a tight pencil sketch of the architectural elements

Next I've masked out all of the white areas with tape, kind of tedious, but having those details crisp is going to give a nice rhythm to the painting.

Here's my gargantuan tape dispenser! holds a few widths, makes it a lot easier.

Okay - now I've washed in the sky. I've been using yellows and violets in my sky lately - a little more interesting then straight up blue. When I get impatient I use my itty bitty hair dryer to dry the wash.

I lifted out some of the cloudy shapes with a paper towel.

Next I want to work on the roof - but I don't want a boring gray - I prefer to layer some transparent colors. I keep a chart of multiple combinations of the paints I use - here I'm using a piece of watercolor paper with whole punched out to help isolate the color and decide if the value suits. I decide to use a combination of hooker green overlaid with alizaron crimson and indigo blue. Complimentary colors will give me a nice gray - here its a combination of green with violet (crimson + indigo).

The first wash with hooker's green

Now I've overlaid it with crimson - it turns a nice rich brown. Although it won't be obvious, unconciously I feel the brown underlay will make the roof harmonize more with the rest of the building.

Now the indigo blue, to cool down the brown and darken the value. I've also washed in the copper roofed steeple.

For the cedar shingles I've washed it with yellow ocher and then used a dry brush to work over the wash with burnt sienna and violet.

Taking off the tape - always dramatic!

I've filled in some of the windows - now to the trees - its like dessert for me after so much detailed work.

This is kind of a stressful process because I underlay the lighter green colors and then paint over that with dark green and "lift"out the trees in front with a brush and paper towel. I'm always nervous that the paint won't lift and I'll end up with a big dark green blob.

The finished piece. I've gone back in and adjusted some of the values so the portico recedes and darkened in the base of the trees to give them a defined shape. I'm happy with it.
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