The Beginning of the Beginning - Part 2

My Belgian artist friend Franklin offered up this terrific sun lit cafe photo from his travels. My painting class was a little scared of it so I broke down how I was going to go about creating the painting in last weeks blog. This week we get down and dirty and slap some paint around with my painting class.

Here is Franklins wonderful photo that we are working with and a few changes that I made to it for the painting.

                 Franklin's original photo                            The photo with a few changes  for the painting.                              

This where we all started. On a 24 x18 oil primed linen canvas panel we rubbed in our first color. I did decide to go with the Burnt Sienna this time. I quickly brushed in the color and then rubbed out the areas where the shafts of light where.This is going to be a loose painting so I'm not trying to nail everything down in space yet. Just a quick rough in of color.

Next we painted in our darkest colors. That being the lower walls and chairs. Again real loose no need to tighten up yet. The left side of the dark area is much warmer than the right side. it doesn't real show in the wet paint but that is what we did. I also put a lot of extra Cad Red in my warmer darks and was able to get the curtains out of it.

The next step was to start placing the tables and chairs. They are the first key to this painting.  

After softening the darks into the floor transition, I went about laying out where the table top were going to be.

These need to be put in cleanly and simplify.

 After those were in I started to place chairs.

 The thing about the chairs is they needed to be put in in the simplest way there is, 

 in one perfect stroke.

This where the class ended. 2 1/2 hours in.  We worked on the chairs a bit more and while in everything was still wet and gooey I mixed up some greens and put scraped in the plants around the windows.

So this is where I left the painting with my students. 

The next day in my studio I looked at the painting and had to make some corrections and these changes couldn't wait until the next class. They had to be made while it was still wet.

Here is what I did. Basically I reworked the chairs straighten out the tables and laid out the floor. the light on the chair legs made me take on the floor painting. I was hoping to leave it for next weeks class, but duty called.

I knew this was going to take all my concentration to make look right so I scouted ahead of the class to see what needed  to be done. Mixing up all the different values of orange and browns was key to getting the floor to pay down right.

Here the floor is in a good place for the next class. I put in some of the glare and reflections , but there is still some magic to be put in yet. Next week we start the windows and the people.

A student in the class did a couple little videos of me while I was working. They are from the end of the first class and I am putting in the plants in the background in one and I'm putting in the wall candle holders in the other.

 Here are the painting class paintings in the different stages of progress.

Ellen's

Don's

Ron's

Karen's

Nancy's

Charlotte's

Ellen's at the end of class.

Don working on his

Ron working away.

Sabrina at work.

Ron's a work in progress

Karen's

Charlotte's at the end of class.

Well there is where we left off.  I will post the next classes progress next week. Hopefully we will be close to finishing this one up in the next couple of classes. Thanks for looking in and see you on down the road!

See more of the paintings of this award winning series at www.theartistandthetraveler.org