The Last Canvas, WIP

This weekend, I started the last canvas for my Cityscape show. It's a 30 x 40, which is pretty big for me. As this is going to be one of the major pieces for the show, I had to think long and hard about what to do. Originally, (several months ago) I intended to do an expansive view of San Francisco; a home run shot, if you will. But now, I'm not too excited about the idea. I think that would give me an interesting painting, but it won't fit with the rest of the paintings. In fact, looking at all the pieces I've done so far, I felt I needed something in-between the more traditional and tonal looking Paris pieces, and the more modern looking later SF scapes.

So here's what I decided to do; a big painting of a Paris architecture, treated (paint manipulation, abstraction, etc) like the later paintings. I didn't want to do something too simple, either. If it's not challenging, I'll feel like a hack. I know that about myself all too well, and a 30 x 40 canvas is not a piece to just bang out.

So I decided to tackle the Cathedral of Notre Dame. A little ambitious maybe, especially with less than two weeks to paint - and I have several others I need to finish too - but to Hell with it. No risk, no glory. Right? I'm documenting my progress here so you can watch me struggle and sink or swim. As if I don't have enough pressure already, hahaha~ But like I've said before, pressure does me good. Most of the time. If I fail, I fail. It's just a painting, after all.

So here we go!

I'm painting on stretched linen, gridded with pencil lines to help me with the placement of the major lines.

Painting with transparent washes.

Filling in all the dark / shadow areas. Pretty sloppy at this point. That's ok, I'll find the precise drawing at a later stage.

Can you see the flying buttresses? Talk about strong lines and angles in a design!

Killing the white of the canvas with a light wash over the sunlit areas. I do this because it's difficult to work with extreme and irrelevant values

Doing a little bit of pulling out with a rag to find the light / dark patterns.

We're starting to see the architecture now. I'm basically working back and forth between dark wash and pulling out with a rag. Nothing precise yet, except I want my verticals to be pretty... vertical. The original grid lines help a lot.

Drawing the buttresses on the left side.

Pulling out small lit shapes in the middle dark area.

Finally dipping into opaque colors and applying them to the lit side. Not worried about exact color, but the value matches the wash underneath. The values are not those of what the final painting will be. At this point, I'm still finding the drawing. It doesn't matter how carefully you mix the correct values, if you stick it in the wrong spot! So first, I have to figure out what the right spots are, and that is all drawing.

Trying out a cool reflected light on one of the buttresses. Looks pretty good.

Indicating some roof detail with opaque colors. Also trying to decide color (hue) direction for the roof and the sky.

By switching back and forth between the shadow and light colors, I'm slowly building the drawing to a more precise depiction of the elements.

A little by little, smaller elements are defined, and the overall picture begins to emerge.

The figures at the bottom will likely move because I don't like them being right underneath a straight vertical line. I just threw them in there early to get a sense of the scale, and to figure out how I might handle the ground plane.

This is where I am now, at the end of day 2. I would say it's only 10 or 15% done. Long ways to go yet, so stay tuned!!

Oh, if you have any questions about the process, feel free to leave them in the comment box. I'll try and answer them as best I can!