Art Is Easy to Make!

Art Lesson 9 by Poochie Myers

Wet Pavement

Poochie would like to start a dialogue with new students to art as well as professionals who might want to include segments into these art lessons, or field questions from participants. Please post your comments to Poochie:mailto:poochie.art@gmail.com.

If you have to struggle then you are doing something wrong.

Start with street scene of buildings and people. You will be painting upside down for the entire foreground. You have to think about color, values an interesting details.

Draw or paint the outline and contours of all object that will be reflected below. Draw in any puddles of water in the street and lightly indicate the edge of reflections in the surfaces of the pools of water. Also lightly mark the general location and direction of reflections in the damp pavement.

Paint in the upper part of the picture as usual.

Next the the damp part of the pavement is reflecting everything around. This is mostly sky but there will be hints of all the surrounding colors. If it is asphalt, there may be grayish violet tinge from the local color. Leave occasional rough-edged lights. Adjust color to match the things being reflected. The value of these reflections will be lighter than most of the things being reflected. and any light objects will have reflections that take on some of the tone of the pavement. Don't let the reflection colors get into the puddles or the highlights.

Let it dry.

Now paint the reflections in the puddles. These reflections though partial rather than complete, you will follow exactly the same rules as for reflections in smooth water. Careful with the relationship between the diffused reflections and their continuation in the pools so that your final pavement displays a coherent set of soft and sharp echoes of the objects above.

Plan ahead, observe and draw on sketch pad first.