For this exercise, my first move was to find a view from a window in my house, as I knew that the doorway views were not worth painting. However, there was a spot at the back of the house which overlooked the garage site and backstreet creating a busy industrial atmosphere.
Once I had sketched a few composition ideas, I moved onto a tonal study and colour swatches that I could see from the view. This proved really well, picking out the key colours and also seeing the distribution of highlighted and shadowy tones.
My next move, was actually quite a spontaneous one, as I found that the sketches reminded me of Tamara de Lempicka’s building work and so I research and found her New York study, and recreated the lines of the piece, as well as creating a colour study in the style of de Lempicka.
Once I had finished these sketches, I knew that I wanted to recreate my own study exactly the way it was, in order to depict a murky Lancashire back view, and so I tea stained my canvas panel and began painting, fading out the pigment of the colour as the block of garage or house got closer to the bottom of the canvas. Overall, I am extremely pleased with the style of the painting, but two problems stand out quite strongly for myself. The first being the handling of the paint, as I believe it does not present a clean gradient and I could have paid more attention to the manipulation of the acrylic. The second is that of the colour scheme, that looks far more vibrant than the study it was intended to look like. I know now that I should have kept with watercolour as this would have been easier to work with, especially where pigment was concerned.
http://www.artnet.com/artists/tamara-de-lempicka/new-york-_eauBsqp3PrTNQVFE8AEiA2
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