This has turned out to be an interesting painting that has evolved over several weeks. I started this with a sketch and in the sketch I wanted to work out the perspective for the bridge so that it looked right. The sketch evolved as you can see here.
Once the sketch was done I transferred it to a 16 x 20 piece of canvas paper, taped the canvas paper to my drawing board ready to paint. I worked out a series of colours and mixes on my palette that would give me a warm fall scene.
Once I had the basic colours on the tress and building I found the whole painting very flat without much definition or variation in colour. So left it sit and dry for a week or 2 and then went back to make adjustments and changes.
One of the first errors I saw was that my bridge seemed to be surrounded by water and this was not intended to depict the flood season so I had to resolve that by adjusting the land mass on the left hand side of the painting to make sure the bridge was connected to the land. I used various values of violet to paint in some negative spaces as a means of separating the different layers of trees in the background and the foreground. Using some of the violet I defined the road and added tree shadows.
One of the instructional videos I watched recently suggested that adding human elements into a paint allowed the viewer to more readily identify with the painting. I believe that it also provides another level of detail and interest to the painting.
So here is a series of photos that show my progress on this covered bridge today. I have just a bit of work to finish it as I have some bushes, fog and details to added to the area to the left side of the bridge.
Let me know what you think of this so far – love to hear from you.
Studio Thirty Eight 