Backlit Street Scene : Preview

I do love painting a good street scene! I find them a fascinating balance of large underlying shapes of light and shadow, yet with plenty of opportunities for details and little touches to create a feeling of life and movement - hustle and bustle.

Summary Points:

• Simplifying a complex scene
• Painting a backlit scene
• Figures - placement, proportion and painting them simply and with character
• Painting and trapping the light
• Painting shapes, not things
• Dry brush, opaque paint and finishing details

I will take you through quite an extensive breakdown of how we need to observe the subject in order to create a successful painting. Including the placement and the promotion of figures within a scene - lots of considerations and little tricks here.

Then using simple large washes to capture the feeling of light, I show you how to block in the main shapes of the painting, getting the overall design working as quickly as possible. After this we slowly build up medium and smaller shapes on top, leading eventually to all those lovely finishing touches and details which are so much fun and really help bring the scene to life.

This process allows for a good look at large washes, including transparent shadows, how to use dry brushwork, plus some ideas on using very opaque paint at any stage to lift areas and add interest.

There’s a lot of info packed into this one, not only for street scenes but for tackling any subject.

See you there!