Painting "Beeman's in Port A."

I have several styles I like to paint. One of those is a colorful rendition of what I like to call, "Coastal Icons." I've painted a number of these in between my harbor scenes and shorebirds. You can review some of these on the Felder Gallery website.

Painting in Costa Rica presents a number of challenges. One of those is getting my work back to the Felder Gallery in Texas. Since my daughter recently had our first grandchild, I planned on traveling to Florida to see the baby. So I knew I only had a few weeks to complete a painting in time for it to dry, roll it up in a tube and make the trip with me. Once in Florida, it is easy to ship the piece to Texas.

So, I decided that if I stuck with it, I could paint a "Coastal Icon" fast enough to take with me. Looking through my iPhoto Library of images, I came across a photo of the old "Beeman's Coffee Bar & Bakery." It was a favorite place of islanders and visitors alike, but unfortunately is now closed. My son, Robby, owner of the Felder Gallery, thought Beeman's would be a perfect subject for the Icon Series, so I wasted no time in getting it started.

For this series, I like to give the subject kind of a warped look, exaggerating the perspectives as well as the color and details. The photo I had taken of Beeman's a few years earlier looked pretty dull to me. This is not one of those times when I blow up the photo and do a detailed tracing like on my harbor scenes. This will require a sketch on the canvas.

So, before I got going with a sketch I thought I would try warping the image on my Mac in Photoshop to get it closer to what I had in mind. Here is the original photo as I saw it on my screen:

In warping the image, I'm just trying to give it some extra life. I won't be tracing, but I would like to see an idea of where I will take it. I opened the original photo in Photoshop on my Mac Book Pro.

Then, I highlighted a crop area to get rid of the background that wasn't needed and begin my warp.

With the "perspective" box checked in Photoshop's crop tool, I pulled the bottom corners (one at a time) out, and pulled the top corners in. When I click on the box now, it will automatically warp the top to be wider than the bottom.

There. That warped it, but it needs some height. Right now it looks too horizontal and doesn't fit the square canvas I want to use.

So, to give me some height I go to my "Image Size" menu, click off "Constrain Proportions" and alter the height to be taller.

There. Now I've got a funky-looking image with a lot more life than the original. The outside of the building shows up pretty good, especially the signs, but the porch and windows are almost black.

So, I zoomed in on the porch area to see if I can lighten it enough to see more detail. It just won't look right to make the porch so dark. The camera I used couldn't handle the contrast between the outside and inside, so it gave me the outside light and lost the light on the inside.

Using my "Brightness" and "Contrast" adjustments, I increased the light and can now see enough of the things on the porch to be more realistic than the original photo.

Here's a closeup of the sign on top of the building. The original photo was taken by an older digital camera, so its all a bit low rez and fuzzy. I'll fix that when I paint it, but I like the shadows I am seeing on the 3D sign.

Once I got the rough image I wanted on my laptop, I sketched it onto the 36" x 36" canvas I stretched the day before. 

Here is a closeup of part of the sketch. You can see how the vertical lines go up and out, giving the image a 3-point perspective. I perspective point goes off to the left, one to the right; and the most important one goes off the bottom as if the building is blasting up and out from the ground.

I did a quick sky and clouds, not trying to be overly realistic. I want the feeling of this painting to be a little more loose and whimsical. I put in a few treetops in the background and started on the yellow part of the sign.

I'm completing one color at a time and not layering any of them. I'm going wet-on-wet to get this done quickly. Otherwise, I would have to let some areas dry too long to paint over them. So, I am painting color next to color. Here I have put in the darker, yellow shadows and started the blue on the letters.

Next, I painted in the turquoise.

Then, the red circles and yellow triangles, adding a darker color for their sides.

Next, I put in the darker sides of the blues and turquoise shapes and a few more shadows, then painted the blue background of the second level of the sign and the blue shadows falling on it.

Once the sign was done, I painted in the coffee cup.

Now the most significant part of the painting has taken shape and I'm starting to put in some of the light tan roof behind the sign. The sun is shining bright on the roof, so it will stay a light color.

So here is where I stand at the end of this post. I will move on down the painting next and let this top part dry. I will have to go back over the yellow ribbon on the coffee cup with lettering and add some detail to the roof, but the sign is pretty much done.