Trina's page of Blogginess: The completed Dolores Street Oil Painting!!

"Dolores at 22nd Street"
2013
oil on canvas
24" x 36"

Today, I completed the Dolores Street oil painting that I've been working on for the last 8 weeks.

During today's session, I worked on some last few details: I repainted the car, worked on the building's sign, added more detail and color to the buildings behind the palm trees, and did some final work on the telephone pole. I also did added some more areas of interest inside and around the storefront, and fixed some of the shadows.

This was, by far, the most complex painting I've done so far. In fact, I remember when I first showed Dean, my painting instructor, the photo of what I planned to paint, his words were, Ambitious. ;)

Oh, my! I learned so much while painting this. It's quite remarkable to think of just how much I leaned. The hardest part for me was probably leaning how to get the perspective right. There's a lot of angles in this image, and if one is off, the whole thing doesn't look right.

I also learned a lot about light, and how it falls on different surfaces. Speaking of which, I learned a lot about color mixing, too. As you can see by the main building on the corner, there's a subtle color difference between one side of the building and the other. There's a lot of subtle color differences in there.

I learned how to layout a painting, making changes from a photograph to improve the overall composition. I think the final painting's composition is much stronger than the original photo.

I learned a whole lot more about shadow - they are in so many places throughout the painting. Some of them are very subtle, but make a huge difference.

This was my first city street scene, and I loved it. I will certainly plan on doing more of these.

The painting is still at Dean's studio. It'll have to dry over the next week, then we will varnish it, and I'll be able to bring it home and have it framed.

I took a few photos of the finished painting this evening, although the lighting is not very good. (there's a light shining on the right side, which washes out the color.)

the completed painting

detail

detail

Just for my own records, here are photos from each session from beginning to end. I like to have the progress of each session shown in one place to compare and analyze.