The Lackawanna Valley, Day 5... inching along

I didn't go to copy last Tuesday, because the temperature in the morning was in the single digits, and snow and ice were still on the ground. What a difference a week makes! Today's temps climbed into the 60s, and it was a pleasure to walk to the Metro in the afternoon with my jacket off.

 Tiny bits of progress - here is how the painting looked as I stopped for lunch. I worked over the sky again, glazing more yellow over the middle area, although you can't tell from this photo. I also put a head on the boy. I worked on the middle-ground trees on the left, but now they look too blue. I will adjust the color next week. A tiny bit more of the big tree has appeared. I painted over the small tree in the field, because I need to move it to the right.

 Here it is at the end of the day (a short day, admittedly, because I was tired, and decided not to go on painting past the point of exhaustion.) It is progressing microscopically. I see that I have made the boy too large, I think, but I don't know if I'll bother correcting it. We'll see. I also ventured into the train, and worked on the fences that run horizontally across the middle of the painting.

 I spent most of the time today "dirtying" up the greens - I tend to paint greens too intensely (I mix all my greens), when actually greens in the landscape are rather muted. I hope that copying this painting will help me when I go out to paint the real landscape (soon!), which is the whole point of why I am copying it. (Click on the images for a larger view)

 Although it was cloudy, it was delightfully mild, so I took a few photos on my way to the Metro. This is the National Archives, from an interesting angle.

I like how windows look with bare trees framing them.

 I do love the buildings in DC. If I was a resident of the city, I would paint looking out the window at the buildings around me, with their windows. I do like windows.

This is the Temperance Fountain (its purpose was to encourage people to drink water, not alcohol). I liked the pigeon sitting on top next to the sculpture of the heron.

Lackawanna Valley, Day 4

I went back to work on those mountains again, trying to match the color and value. It looks pretty close to me in real life in the Gallery, but doesn't look at all the same in the photo! 

I happened to pick a very popular painting, and two school field trips came through in quick succession before I even had a chance to get started. One of the tour guides got me involved in a Q&A with the students. They had some very good questions and I didn't mind. This was how it looked when I went to lunch.

After lunch, I worked here and there on the rest of the painting. I put in more darks, and starting working on the big tree from the bottom up. I put the little figure in, but left his head off for now. At around 3, I totally ran out of steam and just stopped painting for the day. I forgot to photograph it up in the Gallery, and took this picture down in the copyists' locker room. The lighting in there is fluorescent and looks much different than upstairs in the museum.

As always, click on the image for a larger view.

My iphone was close to dead, and I knew I wouldn't be able to listen to the audiobook I've been listening to ("Orange is the New Black"), so I bought a very cheap sketch book and a clever ball-point pen that looks like a tube of paint (!) in the National Gallery bookstore so I could draw on the Metro on the way home.

I think I've finally gotten back in the groove of going to the National Gallery every week. This morning it was snowing, and pretty chilly and windy. They called it "flurries", but it was more of a snow squall -I couldn't see the Capitol from two blocks away. I'm ready for spring!