Adult Books

After the recent series of more "fantasy" oriented paintings for Illuxcon I have got back to another one in my Roadside America series. Certain things I have learnt from this recent work are being carried across to inform my Roadside America series. In this case I have used transparent colour only for the sky and more opaque colours for the land and buildings. By keeping the colours in the sky transparent you can get the sky to glow with colour and look more natural than trying to paint it in opaque colours.
The picture is actually of an adult book store on the outskirts of Detroit and I have tried to emphasise the dichotomy between a mundane and in this case tawdry urban scene with a romantic evening sky setting. I quite like the subtle surrealism of the central cloud mimicking the shape of the billboard as though it was disintegrating in the air. 
Oil on linen 20" x 16". There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.