Today I completed the first painting in a new series of DC-based paintings.  I’ve decided to create an ongoing series called “The Insider’s Washington” in which I will do series of paintings on a particular topic, such as the canal in Georgetown, and now alleys.  I’m quite excited about this!  I will make reproductions of these paintings as well and hope to market them to a more commercial market.  We’ll see!

Anyway, for this painting, I had only a vertical shot that covered very little of the right side! But I decided that I wanted to stay with the 20 x 24 format and figured I could expand what I was seeing.  The shape of the shadow on the right was really important to me.  I decided early on, based on the color in the photo, that this would be a red and green painting. For the underpainting, I used red under green and green under red.  I did not use an underpainting for the sky or top of the painting. I went directly into painting it with a light green and a very light Ludwig pink over that. The white of the snow is also a very light pink, keeping with the color scheme.

This was not an easy picture!  The windows on the left were probably the most difficult part and, interestingly, this is the house that belongs to my old colleague and good friend from the Library of Congress, Regina Reynolds!  We ran into her when we (Sunny Alsup and I) were filming the alley. She seemed amazed that anyone would want to film this.  Fortunately, Sunny and I both have a love of gritty subjects that can be made beautiful!

The grittiness of the paper really helped with this painting. I used my Ludwig “vibrants” set for the reds and other Ludwigs in most of the greens.  They aren’t quite as soft and didn’t fill in all the holes, letting some of the green show through, which tempers the reds.  This is a good paper for this kind of urban setting, I think.  Some other notes on the final painting. The building at right abutting the fence was brown. I started out with that color, then added some red into it, feeling the need to balance all the reds on the left.  The light was hitting the part in the back that I’ve made orange more strongly than anything else. However, oddly, there was light on the both sides of the buildings facing the alley. It was about 1:00, sun directly overhead, and it was like the sun was streaming down the alley!  I’ve started working on another and you can expect to see more alleys in the future, along with pretty pictures, of course!

Snow-covered Alley, Capitol Hill, 20 x 24, Pastel Premiere 400

Underpainting using opposing colors