Last Painting for 2013

"Rain In The City", 8x10 oil on panel

      It is New Years Eve and I have just completed this little 8x10 inch painting for the "Black and White" exhibit at the Salmagundi Club in NYC.  I had to take a break from painting in preparation for Christmas but I am not complaining because we had a wonderful time with family and truly enjoyed the holiday! We are now on the Outer Banks of North Carolina to ring in the New Year and I am catching up on painting and look forward to getting out for a little plein air work. First, however, I wanted to paint this scene I had sketched before leaving home. It will accompany the painting from
my last post. When I get home I will upload an image of that one so I can share the completed piece.

     I have commented in the past about how much I enjoy working in black and white. For those of you just starting out I highly recommend this as an excellent exercise in seeing relative values and concentrating on composition. It is easier to do so when you are not making color decisions and mixing paint.
      The painting above is painted on a Panelli Telati panel covered with very fine canvas. Although already gessoed I like to add a thick layer of my own. I let the brush marks show. When dry I toned the entire canvas with a medium gray, about # 5 or 6 on the gray scale. If you don't have one of those you can easily find one at an art supply store or use an app such as "The Artist's Eye".  Sometimes when I tone a canvas I like the color to be even. Other times, as with this painting I like to get a painterly, uneven effect with the under painting and let those brush marks come through as well. I do this when I know I want parts of the under painting to come through. You can see this around the legs of the main figure. This is a particularly useful technique when painting rain and reflections. The
painting was completed in one session yesterday and I did some minor tweaking this morning. I left
my signing brush at home and the paint had set up too rapidly for me to scratch in a signature.  It will have to wait.

     I hope I will have some work worth sharing over the next couple of days. Until then I wish you a very Happy New Year!

ON EXHIBIT:  "The Thumb Box Exhibit" at the Salmagundi Club, 47 5th Ave., NYC www.salmagundi.org
                           "Small Treasures" at American Painting Gallery, MacArthur Blvd., Washington DC
www.classicamericanpainting.com