Jan 22 - Thirty Minutes into the Quick Draw Competition Painting

The timer ticked on.... ten more minutes passed, and I am now at the thirty-minute mark at this point of the painting. Again, this is a 16 x 12 acrylic, on location on Mission Inn Avenue, in Riverside a few days ago, done for the Quick "Draw".

I'm still using that 5/8" filbert, and painting the big shapes, staying in the cool box for almost all of this segment. The exceptions are the warm sunny grass areas and the light on the tops of the bushes.

Revelation! I realize that in the painting method I'm sharing with you, I almost exclusively work from the cool box to the warm box* in every painting I do. That's because the sky, the distance, the large shadow shapes all come from the cool box. Slap it on the serve it up!! Then head for the warm boxes to start putting on those final layers ("layers" - applicable to acrylics in this case.)

You can see the shapes of the (future) cars now, not much more than blobs, and also the subtle beginnings of the arches in the church, painted either with a layer of lighter cool colors, or adding umber to the current mix and painting in the dark shapes. I got those palm truns in, too.

Oh, that blob of umber in the lower left? Dropped a brush and it thwacked the canvas. Hey, poop happens.



Now that I'm not painting it, I can stop and talk about the design of the piece. (Don't you just HATE it when someone stops by and starts asking questions while you're working? Har...) Look at the white lines, which are the abstract structure of this piece. The slightly tilted horizontals are nicely complimented by the slightly tilted verticals, and the diagonals are balanced by the counterbalance in the lower left. Yup. Planned it that way. Also put the focal point (orange circle) where it intersects those blue lines, that represent dividing the canvas into thirds. If you can get your focal points to land near one of the intersections of those lines, you'll have a more pleasing composition.

Tick, tick, tick.... time to set the next ten minutes!!

* If you need to know what I'm talking about in "cool and warm boxes", please order my DVD set "Colorful Oil Painting" which explains the color system I'm using. It works for every medium.

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