The city at night

Manhattan Evening 6x6 oil, copyright 2011

I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone on this one.  Cityscapes are rare for me and looking back, I don't think I've ever done a night painting.  Just for fun, I went into this one not thinking about having a nice finished piece, but trying to capture the mood, the idea of the city at night.  Getting each and every window would have been difficult on such a small scale and I don't have the patience for such things anyway so keeping it loose seemed the only way to go.

In trying to work it out, I looked a couple of other artists to see how they tackle such things.  One of them, Karen Jurick, also rarely paints cityscapes, but does often work quite small.  I like her take on Lower Manhattan.  Another artist I looked at is David Cheifetz, who often does paint cityscapes.  I love his combination of loose and traditional, and when you sign up for his newsletter, you get to see his works in progress.

The hardest part about this one was photographing it.  The strong contrasts did all sorts of funky things in the camera, as did the very visible brushstrokes - it looks too yellow and not purple enough on my monitor.  One of these days I will get or make myself a light box which should help immensely.

Virtual Paintout

Break Time, 8x10 oil, copyright 2010

I think I mentioned some time ago a blog that has a virtual paintout challenge every month utilizing Google Street View.  The basic concept is that the blogger choses an area anywhere in the world and challenges artists to paint based on an image from Google Street View.  This month's choice:  Manhattan.  I couldn't pass it up, so I took a "walk" around the Upper West Side and found another brownstone that caught my eye.

The little painting above is based on this image on 76th.  Street View photos aren't the highest quality and aren't taken with the artist in mind, which means you take what you get as far as angles and lighting conditions.  It makes the whole thing more challenging, but I feel like I had a bit of an advantage in that I had been in that neighborhood only two months ago.  The biggest problem I has was in when to stop messing with it, in particular with the figures.   They are only about three inches high, so details had to be limited.  It wasn't easy, but I think it worked.

I also found an image of the brownstone I painted earlier this summer, but I like my photo much better!