Saturday, February 02, 2008

Monrovia Alla Prima

I love when things go right painting wise...your colors are close, the image looks cool and more importantly, the paint tacks up like you want it to! I started this one last night at around 10 or 11 and finished around 4am. Alla Prima work can be so fun and just a fun challenge to finish with a decent painting.
Here I snapped a shot of my darks going in. The sky and base paint for the mountains was done already. I thought I'd add my darks and go to bed but you know how that goes when the painting is going good. Next thing you know it's morning.

Here is the finished painting....it's a scene looking up Myrtle Ave in Monrovia, CA. I've been up this street many times in my life. When I was a kid my Mom used to drive us to JC Pennys which was on the right hand side in this scene. My older brother had to have JC Penny t-shirts so that's where my Mom would take us. Pennys moved to the Arcadia Mall way back in the 70's but all of the buildings on this street are all the original buildings from back then. I used to work just down the street in the 90's. I've been amazed at the work of Brian Simmons who has put out some really cool street scenes in Vancouver so I thought I'd give it a try.

Myrtle Ave, Monrovia

16"x20" Oil on Canvas

And some detail shots....

(Looks like an old rambler!, hahahaha.)

4 comments:

Ryan Evans said...

Love it Ron- Definitely exciting to see you add some urban scene to your trademark landscape- you nailed it

Ryan

Ron Guthrie said...

Hi Ryan,
Thanks man. I really put off doing this one for w hile because I thought I'd have a heck of a time with the cars. They actually were nowhere near as bad as I thought they would be.
That's funny, sometimes you don't do a painting because you think you are going to get stuck somewhere and then one day you look at your ref photo and for some reason you think, "oh, I can do that"...that happens a lot. Don't know why though. Thanks Ryan.

Anonymous said...

I Love this one Ron!!! Cant wait to see what you do next!

Ron Guthrie said...

Hi Teresa,
Not bad for a rookie! These are fun...well, this one was because it went so quick from start to finish. Something different anyways. Thanks Teresa.