"Flores" - Next step after Aerial Perspective

My post called Aerial Perspective showed a portion of the background of my painting titled, "Flores".  Today's blog discusses the beginning of the buildings in that painting.  You might recall it is the reflection of the red roofs and other details in the water that will be the focus of the painting.  But before I get to that you might be wondering, what happened to the blues and lavenders in the distant hills?  This is a different part of the painting from what I showed in "Aerial Perspective"; I had not yet added those colors to this section.  When I paint I tend to work one area then move to another.  I frequently develop one section to completion to verify my approach and later go back into the other areas to apply the same technique.  As you can see without the blues and lavenders the hills look distant but rather gray and uninteresting.  Since I love color, leaving gray is difficult for me to do unless the subject calls for it.  I wanted to communicate the beauty of Flores so the grays will go. Trust me on this.

Red tiled roofs abound throughout Guatemala; even the ancient buildings in Antigua, Guatemala had red roofs.  My focus here was getting the buildings on the hillside to stand out as being at different levels, layering one on top of the next.  Since they all had red roofs, I varied the colors within the reds, creating a patchwork effect.  I also used more pale blues and grays in the distant buildings. To breakup some of the red I included some tan and concrete walls.  I didn't want to change the primary hue of the roofs since the red reflections in the water will be the heart of the painting.

At this stage the painting looks rather uneven. I still have many elements to add and the darkest darks are missing.  Having only lights and mid-range values make the painting appear a little flat.  Although I said earlier that I often take one area of a painting to completion before moving on to another section I do tend to wait for the entire painting to be nearly complete before I add the darkest values.  This way I can be sure I am placing these darks where they are needed to pop out a feature I think is important. If you use too many darks then they no longer help to enhance the focal point.  I'll get to those darks and the background blues and lavenders in another blog.

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