Young Couple on the Bridge

This is my second submission to March 2012 Virtual Paintout, St Petersburg Russia challenge. It's oil on 10x12 canvas panel.

While browsing in Google Map, I came upon this scene of a young couple on a bridge. What caught my eyes was the violet hue of the scene in contrast with the yellow sunlight hitting the leaves. (ref) I really wanted to do this because of the nice combination of color, having the cute couple there, even though a bit cliché, didn't hurt either in my view.

I first prepared my canvas with a violet acrylic base color, followed by oil color on top. I tried to limit my palette to mostly the violets, greens and yellow. The bright leaves in foreground and mid-ground provided a nice framing effect to the couple.

Lazy Afternoon in the Park

This is for Virtual Paintout, March 2012, St. Petersburg, Russia challenge. It's oil on 10x12 canvas panel.

Not really sure where to begin to search in St. Petersburg Russia, I dropped the Google yellow man on one of the small islands inside the bay, and connected via bridges. It must have been a warm sunny afternoon as there were a lot of people laying around in the park. I saw this person on the hammock, a sunbather on the lawn, and the silhouette of people deep in conversation in the background. (ref) I liked the interesting composition, with people in shade vs sun, and silhouette of people vs more 3D regular looking ones. The sunbather appeared to tanning her bare back on the lawn, and her fair skin color made a nice pop of color in the middle of the sunny green lawn.

Two Red Pears

This is for Rookie Painter, Feb 2012 challenge, Two Red Pears. It's oil on 10x10 canvas panel.

Despite of the crazy week and a half where I traveled to two different countries with one kid on a swim meet and another on a field trip, I had to do this challenge (ref). I like the simple layout and high contrast. I did this in about 3 hours of painting time while blasting Queen (I usually listen something much quieter). I prepared the canvas last night by painting the whole thing black with acrylic paint. Again, I could have tweaked and refined this even more, but I had to leave it as is since the kids came home from school and the deadline is today.

My relatively simple palette included mainly cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, burnt sienna, alizarin, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, ultramarine violet, white, yellow orchre.