- MVNICIPAL THEATER -

Painting Walkthrough - by Tamino

 


I worked for three months on a commissioned painting.. a 1,60 x 2,10 m painting done in acrylics on canvas. I took lots of pictures of this painting since I started it, pictures of the whole process, so I´m showing the whole execution.

 

 


the original picture
The painting depicts São Paulo´s municipal theater. I took many night shots of the theater to use as reference. I took the night shots with a tripod, or else the pictures would get all blurry because of the dim light. After I took the pictures I printed some of them in a deskjet printer in 21 x 27 cm photopapers to have as much detail as I could.

 

 

The canvas was ordered from a woodworker we know that makes canvases of any size you want specifically... it would be hard to find one of this size in an art supplies store.

I went to a paint shop and bought high quality acrylic wall paint with the color I wanted for the background. I painted the canvas with a paint roller used for painting walls. Well the fact is that I got a color that was too bright. I should have used a darker one, like yellow ocher... it would have saved me a lot of work, since it was the color I used the most.

 

 


the first day of work

I started it making a drawing with charcoal of only the most important lines and structures. I had to study its perspective in order to do it, and really look at the picture very closely. There are things and details from the original image that must be left out, and things that must be adapted. I adapted many things when translating it to the canvas.

Since I was going to paint over the charcoal, I brushed the excess of dust from the canvas with a big dry brush, or else it would get all stained because of the water.

 

 


the brushes
I used brushes of all sizes, with different head shapes.. they create different effects. I used from small ones (numbers 1 and 2) up to really big ones (number 20 and bigger). Some brushes eventually wore out, the ones I scratched against the canvas too much. I use the paint in two distinct ways: dry and with water. Using it dry is best when you want to create lines and elements that are not done yet. and is also good for correcting mistakes. Using it with water is good to maintain a layer that is underneath and also for covering larger areas.

 

 


the pallet with all the colors

I only used six colors, and created the other ones mixing those six in the pallete; still wet on the canvas or in overlap over a dry area. The colors I used were titanium white, yellow ocher, cadmium yellow hue, burnt siena, vandyke brown and ivory black.

 

 


working with light and dark

 

One of the techniques I use consists in mixing the acrylic paint with water and making transparent layers of color with a big brush. Sometimes I use a fan to make it dry faster.. I also get a big dry brush and brush the wet area with it... or else it would drip and stain.

 


making a transparent layer of color

 

Each change you do to the painting must be seen from far away, because that´s the only way of seeing how your changes affected the composition, the image created in your eyes is very different when looking from afar and you can see it whole. After working so much on the same painting you can barely see it whole anymore, so what I also suggest is looking at the painting upside down.

 

 

Below there´s a comparison between pictures I took while making this painting. I took a picture whenever I felt enough changes had been made. Just by looking at the process you can get to your own conclusions, or you can go here to see some brief explanations of the creation process.

 

click back or next to see the comparison between the many stages of the painting

 

 

I worked many times on the same parts of the painting, on many layers.. There are many levels of detail you can work with.. I decided to make this a very detailed painting, and I tried to make the same level of detail on the whole theater. I worked on the edges and corners a lot, I would even correct many of the brushstrokes, defining their edges, making the painting sharper. I would do so using the opposite color of the area I´m working on, so if I´m changing a dark line I would use bright colors to correct it. This can also be done to blend and soften the brushstrokes when needed.

 


working on the shades

One hard thing to achieve are the lights and darks. The illumination of the theater is very complex and I had to manage the warm colors and darker tones in order to create the right contrast. The contrast creates the depth needed for this kind of composition, one that has a strong perspective, and the fact that this is a night scene is also very relevant. The high saturation of the warmer colors like yellow is crucial to make the light areas come foward while the darker areas stay behind, giving it more depth.

It´s hard to make the theater look uniform while at the same time having a good contrast. What I mean is that sometimes some parts look apart from the composition.You have to make it all blend somehow.

 

 


comparing two different stages

I changed lots of things during the course of the painting process, some lines, colors, shades.. it´s possible to do so using thick paint on top of the area you want to correct, already making the changes you want. After it dries you can work on it some more. This means that you´re not limited at all by what you´ve already done, and can always correct anything you want. I corrected the pillars many times, worked a lot on them, as you can see in the image on the left.

 

 


painting more details
 After painting the main structures I painted the details. You can only do so after the first layer is already dry because then you can work using what is already done as base, without smudging. I don´t do every single detail I see in the original picture, that´s not good because you have to choose what´s important and what´s not.

 

 

Here´s the finished painting. It took me a while to be able to look at it and say it was finished.. In a way, paintings are never finished. I always saw something I could still change. The way it looks now pleased me a lot and I did get to a point where I was very confotable with it.

 


click on the image to see a bigger picture of it

 

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