Daily Painting Practice - Plein Air Painting for a good cause

My friend and fellow artist  (Deb Groesser)  invited me this past fall to paint a small plein air for her local  library fundraiser. The Ralston 100 Community Mosaic Art Project was Deb's idea and celebrated Ralston's centennial. The individual works of art were drawn,painted, or pasted onto 6x6 inch canvas.  They were displayed together as one mosaic and for a small donation you could win one. It was a great idea  and I was happy to participate.

I set up in front of Deb's Studio on a freezing cold morning. (Unfortunately Deb was away at some sunny California location painting one of her incredible plein air paintings.) I on the other hand was freezing my kaboodle off standing on the cold sidewalk  painting a local street scene.

 Once I got home and warmed up,  I worked on the final 6"x6" canvas. The plein air sketch on the left was my guide.

 Not too much changed in the second version . I mostly just needed to clean and sharpen lines.

Morning in Ralston 

6"x6" oil on canvas

Daily Painting Practice - Winter Cityscape work in progress

Ok, so last week I attempted a small "easy painting" that ended up not being so "easy".  This week it seemed like the obvious thing to do would be to swing towards the opposite direction. Here's the underpainting stage, it almost looks like a watercolor.

Where do you begin? After painting in the sky I found myself thinking " where to start?" Do I paint from left to right? Or work over the whole painting  at the same time?

Here is the comparison to the plein air sketch. I mistakenly started painting over it before I caught myself. Sometimes it doesn't pay to try and be efficient. .

I decided to start with the center of interest.

One thing to note is if you have a weakness try and find a solution to help you improve it. I always have a hard time with windows and keeping a clean line in a cityscape. So I use a T-square as a guide, (I also have to remember to keep count of the windows...up and down!)

I thought  it would help if I zoomed in for you to see the area I am working on. You can see the guide lines for the windows I drew in with pencil.

This level of detail is very enjoyable for me. I am still watching for hard and soft edges, tone, and form even  zoomed in this far. This is the view my eyes have sitting directly in front of the painting. You need to be very careful though when sitting  this close. Be sure to step back often because....

This is the size of the painting! Keep your eyes on the big picture!!! (even when working on small details.)