Starting a new oil painting: "Taxi"

I started a new oil painting today, and I'm pretty excited about it.

The original photo is one that Miguel took on Instagram. I asked him months ago if I could have permission to paint any of his photos, and he said that he would be happy to see any of his photos turned into paintings.

He took this photo several months ago, and I instantly loved it. I love the colors, and the perspective.


Miguel's original photograph

I decided to crop it a bit so that the taxi wasn't completely centered, and also applied another filter via instagram, which blurred the edges everywhere except for the taxi.


my instagram version of the same photo

I had an early painting session with Dean today. I toned the canvas, then drew the grid on it. It took me a while to sketch in the image, as there are so many important angles in there. I decided to try to get all of the key angles in first thing, rather than to start painting and try to guess at the angles later.

Dean helped me located the vanishing point (which is towards the right side of the interior of the cab), and we drew all of the angles from there. Vanishing point technique still astounds me. I'm certainly learning more about it, and understanding a bit more, but not quite to the point where I'd feel confidant about it yet.


Sketched in canvas

There's an important technique in painting where you paint in the darkest darks, and the lightest lights first. This helps to establish the dark shadows as well as the bright highlights. It also really helps to give a quick sense of composition and depth to the painting, and helps to keep those areas separate from the mid-tones that you'll be doing next. It's important to never mix in white to any of the darkest darks, and vise-versa (because then you'd have mid-tones, and no extremes to highlight).

Today's session was the most successful I've ever been with the darkest darks and lightest lights part. I usually start this way, but it has never been as bold of a start as this one is. There are so many dark, dark parts, and the many angles just emphasizes the boldness of the early start of this painting.


"Taxi", session One

It's certainly in the very early stages still, but I'm really pretty happy with how it's starting off.

BTW: there are only two colors in this painting so far, Titanium White, and a new color (to me) called "Torrit Grey". Dean introduced it to me, and I took a photo of the tube so I could try to find it. That was my intent, anyway, until he told me that it's not actually sold.

Here's some info from the Gamblin Paint site:

Every spring, Gamblin Artists Colors collects a wealth of pigments from our Torit® Air Filtration system. We filter the air around the areas where we handle dry pigments so that our workers are not exposed to pigment dust. Rather than sending any of our high quality, expensive pigments into the landfill, Gamblin paint makers recycle them into "Gamblin Torrit Grey"

Link to full page of information

This is really good to know, as the color that I borrowed from Dean today was just fantastic, and a great alternative to black, or mixing black with additional colors. I'll have to keep my eyes open for this. Apparently, you can't buy it, but it is usually given away with the purchase of other colors.