Church 7x10 derwent watercolor pencils and white india ink 12/11/2020

 

My sister asked me to paint a picture of her church with the wooden 2x4 crosses for her Christmas present. So around 3 on Tuesday, which was a very cold overcast day, I went to her Woodridge Community Church on Sunnyslope and Howard to sketch and take pictures. Only had an hour to work because sunset comes at 4. Plus it was really cold, cloudy, and windy.

I went back on Wednesday at 3 and did a 7x10 pencil sketch. I needed a wider piece of paper if she did not want the crosses to overlap the church. Beautiful winter day! 40F and sunny with only a slight breeze. I texted her the below sketch. She loved the sketch but wanted the front of the church instead of the side.

So I did some quick 4x6 pencil sketches to test the arrangement of crosses and texted it to her.

She sent me this back.

While in the waiting room I sketched two 3x5 pen value thumbnails to see if crosses looked better dark or light.

Then I went on Thursday around 3 to start a 7x10 color sketch. Pictures were taken onsite with the available winter light so they have a blue cast.

While I was out there the clouds for a short time looked like they were pointing to the church. The sun was coming from the left and behind me so I thought of making the crosses shadows point to the church. The evergreen bushes were casting a blue shadow on the off white church which was given a yellow cast from the setting sun. Then I decided it would be cool to reflect the crosses into the glass window of the church. Also got rid of the parking lot and put grass there.

Then Friday, it was 40F and raining so I finished the picture at home.

I'm using my autumn palette but I didn't use all the colors.

• Bark 2000 is a nice purplish color for far trees.
• Willow 1900 was a perfect color for the roof and near brush.
• Mainly used 0900 Iris blue with a little 1100 deep indigo
• Ionian green 1320 for green roof modified with blue and yellow
• Might have used 1560 fern for evergreens and other green places.
• Grass was leaf green 1600 and my work horse yellow, 1700 mustard.
• 1700 mustard was also used for crosses, church, trees, green roof.

Didn't use 1800 baked earth, 0500 chili red, 1910 red oxide, 0260 burnt orange.