Victor's

Below you'll find a sketch (9x12) on panel of a street scene in Clifton Forge, Virginia. The owner of the building commissioned me to paint a view of his father's restaurant, a fixture on the main commercial street there. If you look below at the post titled "Virginia Art Festival," you'll see a photo of my booth with the "Victor's" sign peeping out just above the tent.

When I started this one I wanted to show the entire street, but after giving it some thought and doing perhaps a dozen thumbnail sketches, I settled on a tighter composition like the one shown here.

This is an oil sketch, intended to work out values and relationships of color, but I like it enough to show, so here 'tis. The colors are mostly earths, including pale yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and raw umber, but I did paint the tree with cobalt blue and cad yellow, and I punched up the reds with a touch of cad red. Lately I've been using zinc white for mixing color--much cleaner-looking--but for more opacity I often add lead white. I also used ivory black here and there.