Painting Tonally; Roller Coaster 2

Twilight Ride, 18 x 36 inches, oil on linen

Here's another roller coaster painting. This one is 18 x 36 so it's bigger than yesterday's. That means more detail. Well, scaling up doesn't necessarily mean more detail, but scaling down often means less. I wanted to be able to get that sense of density in the framework of the wooden roller coaster by layering straight lines. I of course used a straight edge to help me draw the lines; with a pencil first, then I used a mahl stick (mine is just a scrap piece of lattice wood) to guide me paint them.

I had a photo reference, but I didn't want to trace it or project it. Not because I consider that cheating, but it just seemed too tedious and daunting. I was more interested in the character of the grid work, and if I could make it look convincing without necessarily positioning each and every line accurately, that would do it for me. They're not drawn randomly, though. I did pay attention to layers of grids and where it seemed appropriate, I tried to paint the layers distinctively. (where its lit up at the top, for example)

Also to add to the believability, I made sure that the horizontal lines were not horizontal, but in perspective, with a few different vanishing points way off the canvas. Yesterday's painting doesn't have that added complexity. This one is more problematic, in that sense.

Drawing structures in perspective can be tricky, especially if the vanishing points are off the canvas. I think I could probably do a post on how to do that (without actually plotting points on the studio wall) if anyone's interested, but I'll have to set up an easy to understand visual aid so it might take a while. I'll try to remember to do it the next time I face that problem.

Here's a detail shot of the right edge of the painting. If you click on it you can see it much bigger, and you can see some of the edge play that contributes the sense of depth.

Oh yes, and someone asked me via email (don't be shy - next time, just put your questions in the comment box nobody will think your questions are stupid :-) if I changed my palette for yesterday's painting. The answer is that I still have the same colors on my palette, but I only used white, black, yellow ochre, and transparent oxide red for the most part. Plus a little help from permanent red for the sunlit tracks, and cad yellow deep on the fence. But just a little bit.

Next, we'll look at some still lifes. Well, I don't know if I can call them still lifes because they're sort of taken out of context and made up and... well. You'll see.