Whiteface - stage 5

This will be the last post before the finished scan that I will post in a couple of days. I have worked over all of the painting now and hope to finish it tomorrow. I have kept the colours within the blue/green - red/orange complementary apart from some yellows and a tiny bit of violet. Also trying to make this one have more contrast than usual. Really need to finish off writing the background to all these paintings in the Roadside Apocalypse series and post, hopefully at the weekend.

Whiteface - stage 4

Haven't done much on this until today as the combination of a wedding I went to on Sunday and the glorious weather has disrupted my normally habitual work pattern. I have at last however managed to paint in the rough colour into the buildings and landscape today. I intend this one to have quite a high contrast to it for maximum drama and trying to keep all the colours used within the complementary palette of blue/green - red/orange.

Whiteface - stage 3

I was hoping to do a lot more today than finish the sky but it was such a nice day I took most of the afternoon off so it will have to be tomorrow morning when I get to paint some rough colour into the buildings etc.

Whiteface - stage 2

I was hoping to get the whole sky painted in one day but it's too large an area so I will finish it hopefully tomorrow. As the picture is based around a blue/green - red/orange complementary the colours I used are: Prussian Blue, Phthalocyanine Turquoise, Emerald Green, Permanent Orange, Zinc White, Warm White, Lead Tin Yellow Lemon, Lemon Yellow and Yellow Lake Deep - all Michael Harding colours.
I intend to make this one more contrasty and dramatic at least in terms of lighting.

Whiteface - stage 1

Another in my Roadside Apocalypse series this one's location is a small town in Texas. I plan to make this one more dramatic with more contrast and a very limited palette probably based on a blue/orange colour complementary but kept quite desaturated. Somebody suggested that I could make them more dystopian which I will do at some point but I want to keep them generally more subtle and ambiguous. I am including a small truck abandoned in the road with a door open. What has happened? Has the driver stopped and made a run for shelter or have they just stopped to pick something up from a shop and left the door open? The visual clues would suggest maybe something bad has happened...where is everybody?
Oil on linen 30" x 20".

Jet

I painted this location a number of years ago and called it "Main Street" which actually didn't reflect the architecture of a typical Main Street in in US Towns. This is the same location but from the opposite viewpoint and keeping the vapour trail and the red brick foreground building. "Main Street" was in my Roadside America series which was generally a bit unfocused and delved often into the genre of Americana but this painting unbeknownst to me would be the precursor to this current series that has morphed from Roadside America into Roadside Apocalypse. I will write more about this in a separate post as there is too much to include in this post.
Broadly speaking although all the pictures in Roadside Apocalypse are at locations in present-day America, I have chosen architecture that was common in Cold War era times when the threat of The Bomb pervaded life below the surface. The clouds are ordinary storm clouds but put into the context of deserted streets and a vapour trail high in the sky they take on the attributes of a nuclear explosion...or to another viewer maybe it's just a picture of a storm cloud in Oklahoma.
The sky was painted in a one-day session as I find if I spend too much time on clouds they start to look heavy and overpainted and is nice to keep the spontaneous brush marks in place wherever possible. 
The painting is based around a blue/orange complementary trying to put the blue of the sky into the other colours in the landscape such as the greens so as to try and keep the colours harmonious.
30" x 20" oil on linen.
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

Jet - stage 6

Pretty much finished the left apart from the water  tower and the vapour trail  and have been working on the rest of the road buildings trying to keep them simple and "blocky" so that they recede. Could well get the rest finished tomorrow...
"Jet" btw is the name of the town that can be seen on the sign at left. it's in Oklahoma.