Starting a new painting: Twin Peaks Tavern

I had my first painting session with Dean back in San Francisco today for the first time in a couple of months. Between my travels, and his, it was the first time that we've seen each other since early June! :)

I'm pretty excited about my next oil painting. I've only barely started on it, but I think it'll be a really neat one when it is done.

I took this photo at the Castro Street historic Twin Peaks Tavern, back in January, right before we moved. I was up in the balcony level, waiting for Pete and Richard to join us, while Dick was ordering our drinks below at the bar.


Original photo

I put it through Instagram, and added a filter to it to make the colors pop a bit. This is the image from which I will be basing my latest painting.


The same image, cropped and with an Instagram filter

By Dean's suggestion, I toned the canvas using grey acrylic paint, He thought it would be a better choice, as it is pretty thick and would smooth out some of the texture in the canvas. This will be helpful when I need to work on detail on faces, etc.,

I usually use a pencil to outline parts of a painting before I start, but the pencil didn't work well on the dried acrylic paint. Instead, I used a paintbrush with a light yellow ochre to start getting in the main shapes.


The canvas with the main shapes drawn in

I didn't have too much time to add paint, but I managed to get in a bit of the darkest blacks, and some of the whites.


the very early stages

Clearly, it's still in the very early stages, but I think this will be a fun one to work on.