Here is my fifth alley picture from Capitol Hill. I knew I’d paint this one the minute I took the picture!  I loved the cool violet color of the shadowed sides and the light hitting the buildings and leaves at right. I decided to include the drawing in this post who you can see how I began the picture. I loved the drawing–particularly the shape of the alley, with the extension to the right. Doing the initial drawings on these paintings can be very time-consuming, but I measured off the photo and the paper with marks for half and half way and half again in between those and that really helped. I made several compositional decisions right away. In the original photo, the left side is completely covered by a dark green bush–very boring!  There was also a pointed tree behind the branches coming on the right side that I decided to omit. I added the small bush at lower left and made up hanging vines to replace the large bush. Color-wise, the major decision was the color of the sky. I made it green using various green Giraults. I liked the contrast with violets and the warmth of the tree. The green is cooler than the tree, but still reads as warm light. The photo was taken in the morning but it has the sense of late day light. I used hard pastels for the bush in the right foreground–dark blue, dark green and Prussion blue. The small square pieces were just right for creating the leaves. The branches of leaves coming in between the buildings were done with Schminckes. Everything else is Girault.  I kept the satellite dish from the photo–after all, there were no telephone poles or trash cans, so I had to have something!  Really like it.  My underpainting was kind of a hodgepodge of warm under cool and local color. I used the same yellow green for the sky that I used in the last alley painting. Obviously, I like this!

In the photo there is a car at the end of the alley, which I decided to omit. I left it rather abstract with two values of color and the interesting box of light around it. I brought one of the branches into it with small orange leaves. My most exciting moments were in adding the light to the garage at right and adding the violet streak up the middle of the alley!  These are the things that make painting in pastel such a joy!

Initial graphite drawing

Autumn Alley, 20 x 24, UART 400

Underpainting (hard pastel and alcohol)