Posted on April 16, 2020 by Leonard Rooney - Uncategorized
East Hastings 1990 II, 24″ x 18″ Acrylic on Canvas, in progress. Follow the steps as I paint this black canvas, twilight view, looking slightly south, east along the 00 block of West Hastings Street as it tuns in the distance into East Hastings, in Vancouver, BC.
Starting a new small, black canvas. Another East Hastings Street scene from my 1990 reference, this time looking east.
Continuing the drawing, which I do with my brushes and rulers and begin blocking in the scene, starting with the sky and basically working from background to foreground. Putting in the backgrounds first allows me to draw and paint in further details cleanly over top as I go, especially when the scene includes any trees. There’s nothing worse than than trying to paint in a background after painting in a tree, filling in between all the leaves/branches 😕😊
Continuing to draw/paint in the scene. Everything is fast and rough as I make mistakes and over paint them, getting things to look right. This line of buildings will take a while but they’re each unique and interesting to work on.
Continuing to draw/paint in the scene, roughing in the buildings.
Almost finished roughing in the buildings, I’ll start working out the cars, street/reflections next.
I’ve now roughed in most of the cars and street reflections. Next, I’ll be starting my second pass to begin adding more detail, once again starting with the sky background and working forward. I need to add some feeling of weather (maybe partially overcast) at twilight.
Another 8 hours and I add some storm clouds. I wanted something to explain the wet street but didn’t want to give up on the idea of there being some sunlight as well. I managed to shoot some interesting clouds on my iPhone that made for perfect reference. From there, I’ve been working on the second detailing pass over the buildings, starting from the background (see detail pic). Still lots of work to come on the buildings on the left and street.
Another 10 hours working mainly on the buildings, including drawing in the larger signage. Perhaps another week or so to go before I move on to finalize the cars and street reflections.
Another 12 hours of detailing the buildings, trees, bus, cars and signage. I still have more work to come on the street surface and store fronts, especially the thrift store on the left, but overall I’m feeling it’s getting very close to being finished now.
Done! 🏁🍺. Finally. The last few months have been brutal and strange for various personal and work related reasons, so it was difficult to fit time in on this project, but now I’m done and ready to tackle something new. Regular design and website work has slowed down somewhat so I should have more time for painting. Thanks for following along. Onward!
