"Warming Hut"
2013
oil on canvas
24" x 36"
I just finished my Warming Hut oil painting last night. This painting was such an interesting and different process from my others in so many ways. First of all, my painting instructor, Dean Larson was away (teaching in Florence!) almost the entire time that I worked on this. He saw it once, briefly, before he left, and again the last day that I finished it. In between time, I sent him a photo of the progress once, and was able to get some great feedback and suggestions from him. This is pretty significant to me: This was the first painting that I painted by myself at home in years. I have my studio set up in my house now, so it was a great test of how well I could paint by myself at home with limited instruction.
The evolution of the image of the painting is interesting, too:
I took this photo towards the end of a training walk on Saturday, April 14th. My team had gone on an pre-season 6-mile training walk with radio personality Peter Finch. Peter joined us for our walk in order to interview us for a radio podcast interview. It was a gorgeous, clear day. Towards the end of the walk, I hopped up on some stairs for a better vantage point, and snapped this photo.
Original photo, Saturday, April 14, 2013
I had a notion to do a painting of the Warming Hut in Crissy Field for some time. The Warming Hut was the "home base" of my walking team, The Warming Hut Hotties for 10 years (before retiring last year). I started training with the team almost 3 years ago, although many of them had been training together for several years already. We almost always started and ended our training walks at the Warming Hut Park Store & Cafe in Crissy Field. It's such a picturesque location, and holds a very special place in the hearts of many of my friends. Anyway, I took this photo thinking it might make a nice painting composition.
When I showed the photo to my painting instructor, he had a few suggestions of how the composition could be changed to make it a stronger painting. He initially had two major suggestions: He thought the cement stairs would not translate well into a painting. He suggested taking them out, and extending the grass. He also said that the angle of the Warming Hut building would be more interesting if we could see two sides of it. The original photo shows only the side of the building. I showed him another photo I had taken that showed a bit of the front as well as the side. The suggested that I use the second photo of the Warming Hut in my painting.
another photo with the different angle of the Warming Hut
This was a good exercise for my Photoshopping skills, and something that I love to do! I did a quickie photoshop job, not worrying about making anything "too perfect" and made the changes. Gone were the cement stairs, and in went the slightly angled version of the Warming Hut! I showed the photoshopped version of the photo to Dean, and he thought it was a much stronger composition.
the new, photoshopped composition
First steps in starting a new painting: tone the canvas, draw the gridlines, and sketch out the image.
toned and sketched canvas
Unlike my last painting (Chinatown) where I focused on color and form, this one was much more focused on individual shapes. When I "filled in the canvas" with color, the painting really started to take shape quickly.
filling in color
canvas is filled with early color
At this point, Dean was able to come over right before his trip to give me a little guidance. He said that the height of grassy hill on the left side created a visual line at the same level as the center of the canvas. This is a composition no-no, as it draws the eye too much. He suggested that I lower the level of the hill. He also suggested that I go back to Crissy Field, walk to the top of that hill, and take a photo of the buildings behind it. Since the hill would be painted lower, I would need more information about those buildings behind it.
Luckily, I had another walk planned, and was able to grab this photo:
view from the top of the hill
With this new information, I was able to lower the height of the hill, and paint some of the buildings behind it.
lower hill and new buildings
additional work on the painting
This was the point at which I had emailed a photo of the painting progress to Dean while he was in Florence. He suggested that I needed to lower the height of the hill even more, because it was now at the same height as the lower roofline of the building.
So, the hill went lower, and we got to see more of the buildings behind it.
This was also the point at which I added a large, dark shadow on the grass area on the right. I had noticed that the grassy area was really large, without much interest. I took a tip from my Dolores Street Painting and added a shadow to break up that space a bit. I think it worked out well!
I had also done a lot more work on several parts of the painting: I worked on the sky, and just added more depth and detail throughout.
lower hill, more detail on back buildings, shadow in the grass
The main composition was set now, and I was able to focus more on details.
more details added - especially to the figures in the front, as well as the suggestion of figures in the background
Yesterday, I had my first painting session with Dean again since I had started this painting. Overall, he was really pleased with the progress, and only had a few suggestions. I had intentionally not completed the painting (ie: I knew I still needed to paint in the cables on the Golden Gate Bridge) until showing it to Dean. I knew he would give me some good feedback before completion.
We did some minor changes to the angle of the Warming Hut roof - this was something that Dick had noticed was slightly off. He has a really good eye for angles!
The biggest change was adding more color/texture/depth to the path in the foreground. I was kind of stuck before, because I knew I didn't want it to look like cement, like in the photo, but ended up with a super neutral path without much interest. Dean showed me some photos of other paintings to use as an example, and I used a dry painting technique to add more color and interest to the path.
Finally, I added the cables to the Golden Gate Bridge. I knew I wanted these in, but not in a way that would distract too much from the rest of the painting. The final decision was to paint them in flowing sweeps, without too much detail so that they would be suggestive, rather than precise. We also agreed that it would not be a good idea to add any vertical cables - too much detail, and would draw the eye from the focal point of the composition.
So, here we have the finished painting! Again, the process was much different than any before, and I think it's good to document the through process and changes.
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