Time for a painting rest
I have been regularly traveling to The Joint, a club in a college town about 30 miles away. I enjoy the music and I have been sketching scenes from there for a while. I made one painting and decided that I needed more work to capture the unique atmosphere of a club.
There is the black ceiling & walls of the room with the spotlights with color gels. If you look up at them you see the bright color circles and the yellow-white of the light leaking out around the edges also. There are the neon signs with all their colors. The incandescent lighting gives a bit yellowish tint to everything else. This place has three sections. One enters at the left side of the front and must veer right in the next 15 feet as the bar starts on the left there and runs almost to the back wall. There are mirrors behind the bar shelves and neon signs & posters all around. Three wide arches open to the dance floor and stage. Two wide rectangular doorway openings lead out the other side of the previously described music area. This third section has neons, posters and banners around the walls and a small bar opened on really busy nights. It has three pool tables, a foosball game and maybe still a dart game.
The colors of one room tend to contrast the colors from the next. In the music area, light pours in from the other two sides and my eyes are adjusted to the dark. I see silhouettes with light on their edges in the room and then a brightness that blurs the details of the adjoining room. I can see how much the light penetrates the room by looking at the floor.
So I took some available-light photos that were a bit blurry to get some more of the atmosphere and then did about a dozen studies; outline drawings in watercolor pencil, then color in & wash, then come back with watered acrylics. I was loving them but then it was like I hit a wall: I was liking what I did, but I knew that I was not going to like the next ones. I forged ahead with one and really messed it up.
Sometimes I just know I need to stop for a while; gain some perspective.
There is the black ceiling & walls of the room with the spotlights with color gels. If you look up at them you see the bright color circles and the yellow-white of the light leaking out around the edges also. There are the neon signs with all their colors. The incandescent lighting gives a bit yellowish tint to everything else. This place has three sections. One enters at the left side of the front and must veer right in the next 15 feet as the bar starts on the left there and runs almost to the back wall. There are mirrors behind the bar shelves and neon signs & posters all around. Three wide arches open to the dance floor and stage. Two wide rectangular doorway openings lead out the other side of the previously described music area. This third section has neons, posters and banners around the walls and a small bar opened on really busy nights. It has three pool tables, a foosball game and maybe still a dart game.
The colors of one room tend to contrast the colors from the next. In the music area, light pours in from the other two sides and my eyes are adjusted to the dark. I see silhouettes with light on their edges in the room and then a brightness that blurs the details of the adjoining room. I can see how much the light penetrates the room by looking at the floor.
So I took some available-light photos that were a bit blurry to get some more of the atmosphere and then did about a dozen studies; outline drawings in watercolor pencil, then color in & wash, then come back with watered acrylics. I was loving them but then it was like I hit a wall: I was liking what I did, but I knew that I was not going to like the next ones. I forged ahead with one and really messed it up.
Sometimes I just know I need to stop for a while; gain some perspective.
posted by Marion at 12:02 PM
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