Thursday, September 29, 2011

Paris Road Bridge - New Orleans


This is my second submission to the Sept 2011 Virtual Paintout New Orleans challenge. It's oil on 12x16 canvas panel.

I have been doing some research on Ralston Crawford paintings lately since a commissioned work I'm working on is of Precisionist style with deep perspective, and Ralston Crawford is one of the better known artists of that style.

While I was virtually traveling New Orleans in Google Maps, I came upon this bridge at Paris Road. There's one view (ref) that reminded me so much of Ralston Crawford's White Stone Bridge and with the same type of lighting from the right. So even though I've already submitted to this month's VP, I decided I had to try to paint this Paris Road Bridge Precisionist style.

I used the long deep perspective that was also used in the White Stone Bridge painting. The bridge structure was no easy feat, and I had to simplify the bridge a lot. I found painting long straight lines with oil very hard to do. I sketched in the basic shapes with a ruler, and then painted all the lines in oil basically free handed, and boy was this more tedious than painting the peonies petal by petal earlier this month! Color scheme was very simple, blue, white and grey plus a touch cadmium yellow and orange. Finally I added some wispy clouds with a fan brush to help draw the eyes up even more.

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