Jan 20 - How the Winning Painting Began

The clock started at 9:30 for all of us on location painters to do a painting in two hours. We were set up all around the Library lawns and on street corners with our art gear surrounding us. None of us were allowed to begin until given the sign.

I had prepped my canvas with a burnt orange underpainting, with some cadmium yellow thrown in to get rid of that white canvas. When the shout to begin came through the cool morning air, then I sketched the scene in front of me with burnt umber and ultramarine blue.

I can already see the abstract structure, and I'm ready to start putting in the first layers of cool colors to set the stage for what is to follow. This is the first ten minutes of my painting time, and most of that was spent figuring out placement of primary and secondary focal points for the design. There may only be two minutes of actual painting time in this block of ten minutes. I had a timer with me for this competition, not to keep track of how much time has passed, but to STOP me at ten minute intervals so I would be forced to take these in-process images!!
Here is the camera shot of the scene in front of me to give you an idea of what was presented for my painting subject. Not much color in backlit stuff. (Unless you know the Color System!!!)

So these images being sent to you in the next days will represent ten minutes of painting time each. It hopefully will help to see how much or little painting is done at each stage. Here you don't see much "painting" but my head is furiously functioning to plot and plan the design. I only used a few colors for this initial lay in of the grass and the shadow sides of the church to this point. More tomorrow!

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