Carriage Ride in Central Park

This is for Virtual Paintout September 2010 challenge - Manhattan, New York. It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

There are so many good views to paint for the Manhattan challenge, and this one caught my eyes because of the humor factor - tourists riding a horse carriage and looking at a horse statue. The lighting was good with good contrast in the Google map picture. (ref photo)

I was curious as to what the statue was, so I looked it up. It's Jose Julian Marti, a Cuban who had fought for Cuba's independence from Spain. The statue depicted his last breath as he was fatally wounded and slumped over on the horse as the panicked horse stood up. This statue is close to Central Park's main entrance at Central Park South and 6th Ave.

I had to artificially cut down the background trees and lighten up the trees so that we can see the statue better. I also made the tourist wearing the white shirt in the sun very bright to make him a main focal point as the tourist looks at the horse statue and it almost looks like the horse statue is looking back at the tourist, while carriage lugging horse just minding its own business and strolling away.

The sky is a coeruleum blue with some ultra marine blue as the underpainting. Trees are combination of viridian, sap green, prussian blue, ultramarine blue, ultramarine violet, cadmium yellow, lemon yellow, white. Ground is gold orchre, white and radian violet. Carriage horse is mostly raw umber and burnt sienna. Statue is combination of black, Portland grey dark medium light, prussian blue and burnt umber.