Our group is meeting up next Friday for another Sketch Walk at Lake Sumter Landing at The Villages. Terry and I have been there once......last year.......which I took lots of photos while walking around. For my painting subject today, I chose to go looking through those photos and decided on this building to sketch/paint. I thought it would be a fairly easy subject to work..........ha ha.........WRONG
All was going ehhhh, OK, until near the end when I was working the pavement below the building. My initial sketch was to add lines in the pavement as the photo shows. It's not a smooth pavement but looks like a whitish gray to very light tan color brick, block, or rectangular stone pattern. I thought I'd just suggest a few rather than add them all in with pen and ink. The initial pencil sketch seemed OK with my idea.
I found as I took ink to the sketch that even the suggested few lines I put in didn't look right.........ink was just too stark and the direction of the marks were way off. And of course once ink goes down.........it's down to stay if not water soluble. And of course I was using permanent ink :-)
On top of that, I tried a light wash of Raw Sienna. Didn't like it..........too yellowish or gold. So I added some areas of light Bt Sienna. It was looking OK but nothing like pavement. And then there were those ink lines jumping off the page :-(
Besides those ink lines bothering me, the perspective was off and with all the variation of lines going this way and that between building, the wood plank walkway and stone walkway...........I just couldn't get it right......not trying to eyeball everything as I prefer to do.
Feeling rather frustrated but determined to complete it, I did something I've never done before. I used acrylic titanium white and painted over the lines and a good part of that area with the plans to take watercolor back over it once that dried.
For me, this trick worked OK but definitely not something I'd want to fall back on as a fix. I had thought to cut out a piece of watercolor paper the shape of that area and glue in place but thought that would be more trouble than it was worth.
Technically I should have just stopped and called it lesson learned but I continued on figuring why not just see what I can do. I can't make it any worse than I felt it already was.
Ending results.....it only passes in my opinion..........definitely not what I was hoping to achieve. The area looks nothing like it should as it looks more like dirt than a walkway. What to do???? Use that area to write about the sketch. :-)
My initial pencil sketch.
Pen and ink making corrections with some of the line directions that were way off (perspective.....one of those 4 letter words in my vocabulary). Even though I came close with the planking.....compared to the building, my perspective is off.
And see what I mean about the suggested pavement stones??? NOPE didn't like. Didn't look so bad in light pencil but ink........no way (at least to my eyes).
Persevering and trying to finish this one way or the other, this is what I ended up with.
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