James Flynn

Hello again, at last I can finally show you this painting I have just finished. It actually didn't take too long this one, only a few days. (Quite often, the best paintings are finished quickly, I find). It really did kind of "paint itself" too, however much that sounds like a cliche. What I mean by that is, I had this painting in mind, but in the end I just painted spontaneously, rather than to a plan. And I am pleased that I did, because I am happy with the end result.

As you have probably guessed already, this is a view of vancouver,canada. I found this reference picture in a holiday brochure a while ago (it is worth taking a trip to a travel agents for some reference material by the way!!!), and I have finally painted it. As for the pretty woman is this painting, well, you are not supposed to exactly know who she is, but I think I acheived what I was going for there....

Anyway, here is stage one....

As you can see, this stage was all about getting the measurements down. Mapping out the painting in a way, I used watered down burnt umber acrylic at this stage.

Here, I started to put down the lights and darks. With any portrait, I find it is best to simplify everything at first, and just see a face as light and dark areas. I also started to put down the scenery here too.

Here, a little more colour was added to the face, I also like to get some detail down around the eyes at this stage too. I realized at this stage, that this painting was going to be very "colour harmonized", meaning I was going to basically paint the portrait and the landscape, using the same colours.

James