From start to finish

Pin It

I just finished a painting that I will use as a mailer this winter.  I thought it might be interesting to see the evolution of the final product.
This was my first sketch:

 not much to look at, but shorthand for my idea: a little girl and her friend bear buying roasted chestnuts on a snowy New York street.

My next sketch is a little more developed:

After I had sort of mapped out how I wanted the layout, I transferred it onto my watercolor paper.
I tried to keep my colors muted and the background loose, to give the atmospheric snowy feel I wanted and to keep the attention focused on the interaction between the characters.  There was a definite awkward stage, that I am sorry to not have scanned.  It would have been nice to see that I was able to push through (I hope) and get it to where I wanted it.
Here's the painting before snow, and final details:

I needed to add some higher contrast and detail in the foreground to help create depth, and it needed to snow.

So here it is, snowy and chilly.  Now off to the printer!:

 

Well, almost.  One more change suggested by my husband.  I changed the streetlights so they weren't quite the same as the twinkle lights.  While I was at it, I straightened out the buildings.  Now it's time to put it down.