No. 309: Sunny Faces

"Sunny Faces" No. 309, pencil, November 2015

Here's one from November 2015 that I plum forgot to post.  I had been asked to hold up until it was delivered for a Christmas present and, with other Christmas orders and holiday hub-bub, it got set aside.
It is, however, still a good study in putting sunshine to paper.
We'll take this one from start to finish.

These siblings were hanging onto a rope swing in front of a big tree.  It was a bright day and both were squinting from the sun. That made shading tricky because part of their faces was dark, and the rest supersaturated with light.

Complicating matters is the girl being a blond, whose hair washed out in the sunlight. A lot of detail had to be left to guesswork.

The sunshine not only illuminated those cute faces, it also cast shadows into the folds of their fall clothing -- those heavy hoodies.

The clothing got finished first. Here you can see the sunlight on the fabric and the shadows in the folds.

The girl's hair partially covered one eye so I tried to imagine how the eye would look "uncovered." I lightened up their faces; the original photo -- which you can barely see, below, had much more shadow.

Last to be done were the hands on the rope. Hands are hard but hands and shadows are really tough. The tree was left out by request (whew).

The end result captured the sun in the hair and on the faces, and brought out details in the folds of the fabric.  A simple brown wood frame was requested, and No. 309 was finished!

No. 339: Two Behemoths

"Two Behemoths" by Tom Wills, August 2016, watercolor.

Decrepitude. How's that for a big word?
Old and in bad condition.
How about behemoth?
Something very big and powerful.
Just one more for my little word game: Symbiosis.
Working with and depending on each other.

We have all three in this painting, No. 339, "Two Behemoths."

But there also is colorfulness, in the shoreline and water's edge.
In this painting I worked to offer a two-fer vision: One worn and torn, and the other bright and serene.
The demarcation line is the drawbridge, which looms above Ashtabula harbor on Lake Erie.
Above it rolls a locomotive (another big word for "train engine"), a beast of electromotive (see what I did there?) traction and torque.
The bridge lowers for the train, then rises for the boats.
All of the shoreline works together to allow both commerce and leisure, at least for now. Much of the rail operation for hauling coal and ore from the harbor is shutting down this year.

William D. Lewis' original photo, waiting on the train.

This unique angle, looking under the bridge from the water, was captured first by William D. Lewis, staff photographer for The Vindicator newspaper in Youngstown, my colleague and friend. In his real life he likes to sail Lake Erie and play his banjo, among other outlets.
But on this bright July day, Bill had to wait for a train.  So he used his phone to snap some images as he waited.
As soon as I saw this, I told him that I wanted to paint it, and he gave his blessing.

I worked really hard to make it look crummy. There is a lot of rust and grease, peeling paint and other filth on the bridge and on the train engine, and I tried to mimic all of it with the paint brushes and colors. What looks like corroded, crumbling metal is a soup of black, brown, gray, purple, blue, yellow and even white, built up over several layers. At one point I used a wad of paper towel to create texture.

The large chunk looming over the back of the bridge is actually a lot of concrete encased in steel.  This counterweight works with gravity, electricity and a series of gears and other weights to raise and lower the span. A lot of black and purple were used to create its shadows.

The primary color on No. 339, however, is blue. All of those girders first got a wash in shades of blue, as did the water. The wash of colors covered what resembled a blueprint that I had drawn for the bridge, train and shoreline. My brushes followed those pencil marks for three weeks.

The train engine got painted three times.  First I put down light blue and yellow, then I dabbed on and smudged black and gray and maybe a little brown, and then a few days later went over the whole thing with darker blue and orange, and a little bit of white to make the numbers and letters pop.

Once the top two-thirds of the painting had been completed, I set about adding the boats and docks, buildings, tree line and grasses to the shore.  These elements are all suggested, rather than actually drawn in detail, to give the illusion of distance and, perhaps, rolling movement on the water. There are hints of red in the boats, and greens, browns and grays in the landscaping.

Last to be done was the water. Under the bridge the water is brown and murky, shaded by the structure, its girders making shadows.  Out in the harbor the water is blue-green, reflecting the sun and sky.  Again I used a wad of paper towel to dab and smudge white paint across the water to make it bright. 

This little harbor is a bright place, and this painting is the second time that I have tried to capture its charms. The first painting is No. 325 (Walking Through a Postcard).
http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2016/03/no-325-walking-through-postcard.html
It brightly shows the town's red brick buildings, colorful flower pots, inviting sidewalk benches and -- off in the distance -- a drawbridge.

http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2016/03/no-325-walking-through-postcard.html

This latest effort offers another view -- the underside, if you will. But beauty can be found in anything if we look hard enough.  Even in concrete and steel.

These paintings are no longer available.

The Apprentice and His Shadow