"Madison" - 8" x 10" - oil
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Once again I waited until the last minute to work on the Different Strokes from Different Folks challenge. Normally, it's fairly easy to finish a painting in a day or so but this scene of New York City's Madison Ave. was a tad bit complex. During the painting process I found myself getting stiff and overly concerned with detail. I reverted to a drawing exercise from undergrad. I flipped both the reference and the painting upside down and proceeded to finish it upside down. This wasn't done to show off but to get my mind off of the complex scene. It wasn't long before I had a delightful moment of artistic clarity. The buildings turned into simple shapes and the traffic appeared only as dabs of paint. You could even call it a Matrix moment.
19 comments:
your piece is so beautiful. I love the light in the distance. You have such a purity of colors and feels, wonderful.
Oh Steven, you have your signature palette and it is so beautiful. NYC never looked so good.
So clean and I love the colors! Very nice job on this challenge!
OK, now I can't get that song out of my head.....thanks.
lovely painting, my friend. Love it.
You've hit a home run with this one. And a great reminder to sometimes look at things differently.
I like what you did with this challenge. It was tricky, wasn't it? It's so easy to surrender to the "temptation of detail"...
The comments are coming in faster than I can respond so I'll just say ...thank you everyone for your kind words. I didn't think that I'd get such a good response from this piece but I'm not complaining. Stay tuned because there's always more to come.
Beautiful painting and thanks for giving us a glimpse of your process!
Thank you Shelley. I think it's helpful for people to know the how along with the end result.
Steven, you have a great sense of depth here, I think this is one of the very best entries.
Thank you Deborah. Depth is one of those things taht I'm always working on in my paintings.
Great piece!
Great co-option of the title, and a wonderful golden glow in the colors.
Thanks for describing your process; I've done the upside down thing a few times but should use it more often for those tricky situations.
Beautiful. You've given it such depth that it almost feels like I'm walking into the scene.
Thank you Garriott! I'm glad you noticed the glow. I'm trying to bring that into more of my pieces.
I realized that I need to share more of my process with these pieces so it doesn't appear that I'm pulling them out of thin air.
Thanks Kerri! Feel free to walk around in any of my pieces.
Great piece. Love the colors and lighting.
LOVE it. (sorry for shouting) It's just fantastic. Kills me that you wait, and then hit it out of the park. love the warm glow.
bowing down.
I remember that exercise at VCU. Nicely done :)
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