Realistic Impressionist - that's me

Here's another view of the subject of my next painting, the bell tower at Mission San Miguel Arcangel in San Miguel, California.

At this point in my painting career, I don’t want my paintings to look like photographs even though I really enjoy studying paintings by other artists that appear lifelike. It’s not necessary that my foliage be identifiable by a dendrologist (a person who studies trees and other woody plants) but I certainly don’t want a viewer of my paintings to have to spend too long deciding that what they’re looking at is, indeed, a tree.

Most realistic paintings start with a drawing. Since drawing is an area that I’m still struggling with, I had to decide how to get a realistic drawing onto the canvas to paint. One of the ways I’ve transferred photographs to canvas was to enlarge the photograph to the size of the canvas and trace the elements I wanted to paint.

With this painting, I’ve decided to use a grid process. I'll be painting on a 16x20 canvas. So, I enlarged the photograph that would serve as my basic reference to 8x10. That is about half the size of the canvas (lol). You can see the photograph in my blog entry of 03/31/08. After enlarging the photograph to 8x10, I used the drawing feature of MS Word to place vertical and horizontal lines every half inch to form a grid across the face of the photograph.

After I paint in the sky on the canvas, I will use a T-square and lightly draw horizontal and vertical lines to form a 1-inch grid on the canvas. Each ½-inch square on the photograph from the computer will correspond to a 1-inch square on the canvas. This breaks the design down into smaller, more manageable areas and enables me to just draw what belongs in each square to ultimately reproduce the subject of the painting, in this case, the bell tower.

When I begin a painting, I start with the background and work my way forward. I’ve done underpainting on most of my paintings which means I paint in the object with the darkest value and then using ever lighter values and tones, I paint in the details of the object until it is as refined as I want it to be. Since this will be the first time I’ve really attempted to use the grid method to draw the subject, I’m not sure how it will work with my usual technique of underpainting. I don’t know if I will have to keep redrawing the grid or parts of it. But, then, this is why I started this blog. I wanted to journal the method to my madness so that those more experienced could offer their wisdom and those still eager to learn, like me, could learn and share their insights, as well.

Happy trails ’til we meet again.

What to Paint - The Bell Tower at Mission San Miguel Arcangel

I came upon this subject by a circuitous route but such is life, in general. I was searching for images of the entry way to Mission San Miguel Arcangel in San Miguel, California. However, when I saw this bell tower among the images in my search, I immediately knew what part of this mission I really wanted to paint.

The bell tower is interesting to me because of the variety of the shapes of the bells. Also, the roofline over the three bells is stepped up which I think adds interest. For some reason terra cotta tile roofs have always appealed to me. As well, the delicate cross atop the left most bell, added another layer of contrast against the massive middle bell.

Another interesting aspect of this bell tower was that where the stucco had worn away, there wasn't the usual brick pattern. With a little research I learned that the bell tower, unlike much of the rest of the structure at the mission, had been built using stones from a nearby river. Their variety reminds me of the pebbles you can buy for the bottom of your fish tank. This array of color would add another layer of interest for the potential art lover viewing the finished painting.

All of these elements of this picture made me want to paint it. There were several images of the bell tower from different perspectives and distances. So, I printed them all and studied them as I planned my painting. I decided that this view would be the basis of my rendering of this beautiful relic of times gone by.