Back To Painting Again - Creative Process

Hello! After two weeks of travel, we have reached Colorado where we will be for the next couple of months. It's familiar territory for me, since it was home for many years. I feel so blessed to get to spend time in two places that have such natural beauty and yet are so different from one another.

When we reached Denver, that city was almost at the end of a 25-day streak of 90 degree days, and incredibly they have only had a bit over three inches of rain this whole year. The afternoon before we left there was a big fire in the grassland of Green Mountain which came so very, very close to a neighborhood of expensive homes. As we drove up in the hills we could see the charred remains of the fire which covered somewhere around 900 acres on the east side of the mountain.

Today I got to paint with my friends in the Glenwood Springs Art Guild and enjoyed chatting with them and catching up on what had happened since I last saw them. I did make some progress on the Italian wash job painting that I previously shared on the blog. This is the painting I had started before we left on our trip. The first few steps in creating this painting can be found on the blog dated July 12th entitled Creative Process. (Click to refresh your memory).

Today I started adding watercolor to the inside squares (the background is all acrylic). I could hear Pink Floyd singing Just Another Brick In The Wall
as I painted the stones using many different colors, mixing bits of cobalt blue, burnt sienna, quinacridone gold, Winsor purple, brilliant orange and a little caput mortem from time to time. But first I painted the sky in the left panel and all of the windows.

Of course, after I stepped back from the painting I could see some issues I will have to keep in mind in the next painting session, the most bothersome to me is the almost "kiss" at the left bottom edge of the roof. I am also going to have to be very cognizant of the colors of the stone and not let everything blend together into the background. I am now thinking about making the right square more blurred so that the effect would be like a camera tightly focusing on the left square. Also, I'm not finished outlining the squares and creating the shadow effect I want.

Taking a photo of your paintings when they are still unfinished and looking at them on a computer screen helps also to point out any color issues. I found that the window reflections are not reflecting the sky color, and I will need to address this also.

So, that's where I am after this painting session. There will be more to come. Stay tuned.