Lewis Hamilton – day 5
I’ve got back to this painting at last, after an enforced lay-off of a few days. I was doing a portrait commission in the meantime so it was something constructive at least.
As you can see, I’ve got the background into some kind of shape today. The catchfence on the right looks more like a solid object now. In fact it looks a bit too solid, it’s a wire fence not a wall. But I think it will make sense when I suggest some of the texture later on. The mass of the tree behind the fence needs to show through a little bit, it’s basically like a semi-transparent material. It’s important to correctly get the shape and tone of the tree, filtered by the fence, before messing about with little details like fence wire.
Notice how the form of the fence is delineated by the dark trees to the right of the fence, the shadow of the fence overhang, and a little bit of the skyline in the background. A large section of the fence just fades right into the sky, but you can still where the fence ends by implication from other objects the fence is in front of and by the curve of the overhang. Also at the top, I deliberately broke the line of the fence by allowing the tree behind to poke over the edge. This allows me to show the highlighted edge of the fence. I find that all quite fun.
In the background the skyscrapers are in place, using just a touch of blue-grey paint with a lot of white. I’ve also improved the tropical-looking trees, making sure that they have the right perspective relative to each other. There will be a catchfence on that side too, but again I am planning to drop that in at the end.
The painting is still lacking a bit of zing, it needs some more movement too. As usual, sometimes I think it’s going OK and other times I’m feeling a bit disheartened or frustrated with it. But that is very normal, I don’t know if other artists go through the same angst with every painting but I suspect they do….