It was so much fun to do this painting.  Yes, it’s dark and gritty.  I like that. I can hear the noise of the train going by when I look at this. I also remember that scene in the Blues Brothers movie from 1980.  The brothers are in an apartment right next to the Chicago El:

Jake: How often does the train go by?

Elwood: So often that you won’t even notice it.

Myrtle Ave. El maybe finished“True Grit”

NYC elevated subway line, Brooklyn.  Watercolor on 300# Arches coldpress.  Size is 163/4″ x 25″

I did this City-scape in the style of Tim Saternow and Joan Iaconnetti using the “breaking all the rules of watercolor” technique.  I started with a grisaille first painting only values starting with the darkest to the lightest using W&N Paynes Gray.  Once that was done, I took a large brush with clean water and splashed that clean water in spots over the painting.  I then used a warm color, burnt sienna, and a cool color, paynes gray and splashed the painting some more.   I then left it overnight to dry.

 

After painting using only paynes gray and painting the values - splash with clean waterFinal Grisaille splashed with clean water.

The following day all the paint had dried and I was ready to work on it some more.   I softened some of the edges of the splashed paint, I reestablished some areas that were lost from the splashed paint and finally I added some “local” color including the orange in the sign, some blues and greens and yellows in the cars and some earth red for the rust in the steel.

After splashing with clean water splash with diluted paynes gray and a warm color I used burnt sienaGrisaille splashed with paynes gray and burnt sienna.