Painting Sessions at Stan Hamilton Fine Art Gallery of Nashville, Indiana

HAMILTON'S FINE ART GALLERY

The photo immediately below is the subject of this painting.

This webpage shows my procedure in creating a complex painting, based on the photo above, for those of you who might be interested in the details of each painting session. The scene is a complex scene of downtown Indianapolis, IN during a forth-of-July festival that used to take place every year. The photo composition is about fifteen to twenty years old. I will give a brief description of each of the fifteen sessions it took for me to complete this painting. At my studio, I usually have two sessions a day, each session lasting up to two hours.

For the first session above, I estimated placements of the buildings, buses, trees, light poles, sidewalks, and fountain with a brush by simply viewing the photo, not using any rulers or measuring, knowing that I'll be making minor corrections as I go along.

For the second session above, I created the sky effect, getting some ideas from the photo but creating a different effect. After I finished the sky, I started on the AUL building and another building in the background. I also made a minor correction in the left building roof angle.

For the third session above, I continued modeling the background buildings.

For the forth session above, I started on the left building.

For the fifth session above, I continued with details of the character of this building.

For the sixth session above, I started modeling the various trees in the scene.

For the seventh session above, I began painting the busses and some of the grass.

The photo above shows both session 8 & 9. I forgot to take individual photos. The rest of the grass, the flower beds, the flower pots, and the fountain were painted during these two sessions.

For the tenth session above, I made minor corrections and changes throughout the whole scene, correcting edges, angles, etc.

For the eleventh session above, I started painting people into the scene. While difficult to see in this photo, I painted nine people in the far distance in front of the left building, people on the left sitting, a group of people in front of the bus on the left and right, people by the fountain.

For the twelfth session above, I painted a couple of more people in front of the fountain and some children in the fountain.

For the thirteenth session, I painted more children in the front part of the fountain.

For the fourteenth session, I finished painting the people close to the fountain and started painting a person close to the front of this scene.

I completed the painting of the people, adding one more in the front, then added shadows to the different objects and people. I made a final check and made minor corrections in different areas of the scene. Below photos are close-ups of the 43 people included in the composition. Title of the painting: Indy Festival

The photo just below is used for the following painting of the beautiful autumn colors of Brown County. The painting took four sessions.

During the first session, shown above, I indicated the basic general shapes of the hills and rolls of trees with a brush. Then I painted in the sky and started a base coat of color and value to help establish the different atmospheric distance of the trees.

For session two above, I continued the establishment of the base value and color foundation, then started on the far distant hill, covered with trees, and moving forward.

In session three above, I started establishing the basic colors and sizes of the tree-lines, gradually increasing the values and intensity of colors, as well as the sizes of the trees.

For the forth and final session above, I finished establishing the values and colors, shapes, and sizes of the trees in the foreground and distance. Additionally, I decided to double glaze the distant trees as the values were not to my satisfaction. This helped in pushing the distance of the background trees back in the distance. The painting is an oil on canvas, 18" X 24".

The next photo is Gypsy. This took three sessions.

The first session shown above is where I established the pencil sketch of Gypsy, painted the background and blanket, downplaying the blanket and changing the background to avoid distraction from Gypsy.

The second session above shows that I focused on Gypsy's head and eyes, attempting to capture her profile.

In session three above, I refined her head, showing her with the tongue sticking out, then finished the rest of the body. This is an oil on canvas, 12" X 16".

Home page 12" X 16" Paintings 16" X 20" Paintings 18" X 24" Paintings NFS Paintings Computer Paintings Pencil Drawings Commission Portrait Information Artist BIO