Artists & Illustrators magazine - Summer In The City first day

Initial sketch

Pencil layout

After a some thought I settled on trying to get across the feeling of an hot early afternoon in a deserted street (bar a figure with an umbrella eating an ice cream) in an unspecified city in the US. Everybody else is getting some shade, maybe in the cinema whose entrance provides cool escape from the heat in the street. Right from the initial (rough) sketch I had a strong design in mind that was based on the play of shadows on sunlit buildings with one strip of blue sky showing approximately a third from the left of the picture. As the buildings are predominantly pre-WW2, it will have something Hopperesque about it although the scene is essentially timeless as there are a couple of modern buildings in the background too.

Acrylic painted over pencil

All of these stages of the painting as I progress will be shown in the article along with
accompanying explanatory text to make up the twelve stage step-by-step demonstration.