City Stroll

Original Oil on Panel  8 x 10  $125

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Here is City Stroll complete. My focus on this painting was to simplify the image as there was a lot going on being a city street scene, and try to say it with less, in terms of image content and brush strokes. I wanted the strokes to be fresh and painterly. I had some great feedback on the process posting so I'm going to open for discussion some of thoughts while I was painting and now that it's complete.

I decided that I needed some of the foreground street clutter, like signs, sandwich boards, newspaper boxes, and tables and chairs to create the ambiance of the place. Then from midground back, I squinted a lot and just laid in strokes with tonal values greyed and lightened to push them back.

I'm quite happy with the composition and the colour palette. The fellow strolling is my focal point and I really like how the highlights on the brick wall and the awning on the right point down to him, and the two vertical posts on the left frame him in. I also placed him so that the highlights on his chest would fall at the intersection of the grids lines, if the canvas was divided in thirds in both directions. These four intersections are the strongest positions for the focal point. To suggest the street going back in space, those three lines of shadow were quite important. The colour palette of complimentary red and green happened as I was painting. The fellow had a light blue T-shirt which I decided to change to yellow green as the brick wall  took shape, and then I just added toned down touches of red in the objects around him so he would pop. So I hope you like the outcome and please feel free to comment on my decision making process.

City Stroll