Bar & Grille

 The second in my series of paintings "The Sleeping City". They are kind of Edward Hopper inspired but with touches of Magritte maybe combined with my penchant for mood and atmosphere. I want these cities to be dark and silent as though it really is sleeping but they are hopefully enigmatic too - they look too silent perhaps, maybe this is some sort of post Apocalypse where there are just a few survivors left or in this case by some anomaly a lone neon sign lights a forlorn street in a dead city... or maybe it's all quiet and everybody is tucked up in bed peacefully sleeping... I do like enigmatic pictures, a sense of mystery....

I am trying to use different colors to what I normally use for this series with this one based around violets that have been desaturated with green where needed.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

Bar & Grille -stage 4

 I have the background mostly finished and am now working on the foreground buildings, I seem to be settling on the neon sign being mostly pinks with some yellow but I haven't started it yet, just left a space where it's going. Still difficult to photograph...

New colours used: Brilliant Pink and Manganese Violet.

Orogrande sold

 "Orogrande" has just sold to a buyer/Facebook friend who has I think two more of my paintings in his collection. As it was sold direct I have marked it as sold on my Artfinder page...

One of my The Big Sky/Roadside America series of paintings and another of my abandoned gas station paintings (I seem to have a thing about them).

Oil on linen 22" x 16".

Bar & Grill - stage 3

 

Didn't get a lot done today.... I painted a second pass of colour over the sky and background buildings and then made a start on the middle ground buildings ready to finish tomorrow, Trying to keep it soft and mysterious....

Bar & Grill - stage 2

 Really hard to get  a decent pic of this, it's much more like a blue/violet in the background than it appears here. The colours should work but it might be the final scan that shows the true colours - that I think will work, honest. I have also worked out how I'm going to do the sign but that's a few days away yet. Trying to keep the background soft and mysterious....

Colours used so far: Ultramarine Blue, Ultramarine Violet. Dioxazine Purple, Pale Violet, Permanent Sap Green, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange and Zinc White.

Bar & Grill - stage 1

 This is the second in my "The Sleeping City" series and is another New York (although it could be any large American city?) rooftop picture but this time I am planning on using different colours to the last one. I struggled with the composition of this as I was planning on it showing a solitary neon sign above a shop/bar/whatever on the ground level as well as showing a rooftop view across the city - this proved impossible so I left it alone for a day and thought about it this morning over my breakfast coffee and decided to combine a neon sign further up the building with the rooftop view.

This is the initial tonal underpainting stage using my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and flat brush.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

The Night Owl

 This looks like the last in my "Snow" series as it has now morphed into a new series called "The Sleeping City" of which this is the first...

A decade ago I was doing a lot of Edward Hopper-inspired paintings which tailed off when I started to produce work with a more Fantasy feel as I had broken back into a market that I thought I had left behind but which at least I still had some tatters of recognition in. I seem to have come back full circle with the Fantasy work now informing this more "Fine Art" aspect to what I do. "The Sleeping City" will (hopefully/presumably) be a return to some urban scenes with possibly a slight Retro feel to them combined with a Fantasy sensibility in terms of mood, atmosphere and lighting.

A recent theme has been the solitary light in an urban or landscape scenario which I now intend to develop for this new series in one way or another. Whether they will all be nocturnes for instance I have no idea at this point....

I had originally saw this in my mind as based on desaturated blues but as it progressed I decided to keep some of the colour of the brown/purple underpainting to give it more variety of colour.... this is the advantage of being your own Art Director, you can change things, quite a lot sometimes.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.