As you can see in my last post, the first day of painting was spent planning out the perspective lines and starting to block in some foundation colors:
By the end of the next day, the entire canvas was covered, giving me the basic colors and tones to actually start the final painting. Because I want the chairs to capture the most attention, I then deepened the distant background and muted the color of the wall on the right side:
The third day was spent changing tones that bothered me, such as adding a warmer color into the porch floor and the shadows upon it. All the horizontal lines behind the chairs bothered me, so the foliage shadow design was extended across the porch. I like that better. The chair details were also cleaned up. Yes, I did actually paint the entire picture twice by this time. I heard somewhere that you are not really painting until you are pushing paint into paint. That's probably true. This stage of the work is always the most fun for me. It's where the magic happens:
The painting will dry for a week or so, then I will look at it again with fresh eyes and probably make a few more changes. I hope you enjoyed seeing how this painting was created. Please drop me a line if you have any questions.
