My sister-in-law, who lives in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, recently commissioned me to create a massive acrylic painting of the Charlotte skyline for her apartment. When finished, the entire skyline will take up three side-by-side canvases, each 22"x28" in size. She wanted a minimalist color scheme (blacks/whites/grays with earth tones and some gold/yellow) and wanted it to be more or less true to the actual Charlotte skyline.
The first step I had to tackle was lots of planning. I found a picture of the skyline online, traced the main, important lines I wanted to make sure to get proportionally accurate (i.e. the shapes of the buildings), and took lots of measurements of these shapes. Then, I figured out what my scale factor would be to scale my 8.5"x11" print-outs up to the right 22"x28" canvas size, and did a lot of math with my collected measurements to get a new set of data points. Next, I plotted these points and lines onto the canvases using a yardstick to help me measure, so that I would have a complete sketch of the skyline across all three canvases.
Today's blog post will show the step-by-step photos of how I sketched out the skyline, once I had all my initial measurements finished and my scale factor math complete.
Here are the three canvases, still in the plastic wrappers from Dick Blick art supplies. You can see the printouts I made for each canvas, which has 1/3 of the skyline. The color picture, a black and white version with the sky deleted (to help me see the edges of the building better), and the pencil tracing I made of those buildings, which I scribbled measurements all over. There is also a stapled packet for each canvas that lists all the scale factor measurements of what points I need to plot on the paintings.
I started with the far left canvas.
Then I moved on to the middle canvas, making sure to line up the buildings and other markings that bridged the gap between the first two canvases.
Finally, I sketched the buildings onto the right canvas.
Only once all of that planning and sketching were complete could I start putting paint to canvas. Check back soon for another blog post featuring step-by-step pictures of starting the acrylic paint.
The first step I had to tackle was lots of planning. I found a picture of the skyline online, traced the main, important lines I wanted to make sure to get proportionally accurate (i.e. the shapes of the buildings), and took lots of measurements of these shapes. Then, I figured out what my scale factor would be to scale my 8.5"x11" print-outs up to the right 22"x28" canvas size, and did a lot of math with my collected measurements to get a new set of data points. Next, I plotted these points and lines onto the canvases using a yardstick to help me measure, so that I would have a complete sketch of the skyline across all three canvases.
Today's blog post will show the step-by-step photos of how I sketched out the skyline, once I had all my initial measurements finished and my scale factor math complete.
Here are the three canvases, still in the plastic wrappers from Dick Blick art supplies. You can see the printouts I made for each canvas, which has 1/3 of the skyline. The color picture, a black and white version with the sky deleted (to help me see the edges of the building better), and the pencil tracing I made of those buildings, which I scribbled measurements all over. There is also a stapled packet for each canvas that lists all the scale factor measurements of what points I need to plot on the paintings.
I started with the far left canvas.
Then I moved on to the middle canvas, making sure to line up the buildings and other markings that bridged the gap between the first two canvases.
Finally, I sketched the buildings onto the right canvas.
Only once all of that planning and sketching were complete could I start putting paint to canvas. Check back soon for another blog post featuring step-by-step pictures of starting the acrylic paint.
No comments:
Post a Comment