Avery's 7th Birthday Painting

In an effort to present Avery with a less childlike painting I chose the Prague skyline thinking that it's a pretty adult scene, yet it maintains the magical charm of a fairy tale which a seven year old girl could relate to. I was extra late in delivering this year. We were away on her birthday, October 16th, and I was not at all organised before leaving on September 28th. There are any number of excuses I can give for not getting at the painting promptly after our return (October 21st) but none of them really wash. Except that it was an epic subject to tackle and at times I wondered if I had lost my mind.  

PRAGUE SKYLINE   oil on canvas 12" x 24"

Once I had the drawing established, I added some dried bits of vegetation (using gloss gel medium) to create texture in the foreground trees. Thanks to Debie for the dried plant life. It's yarrow, I  think. The Flower Children can verify this for me ... 



In order to make the vegetation white, I gessoed over the bits taking care to apply the gesso much more thinly over the drawing so as not to obscure it entirely ...

As I often do, I began the painting using acrylics, thinking I'd finish it in that medium but the final coat on the sky was lack-lustre and disappointing so, as I have done so many times before, I turned to my oils. They never fail to give me the luminosity I'm after.



Early stages in acrylic

The oil brush stokes going every which way in the sky capture the light differently causing it to sparkle. As you can see, looking at the right side of the photo below, I powered out (in this session) before covering over the acrylic paint entirely ...

  

 Here, as above, the foreground tower is much too dark

Almost done ...

... but OH NO, this is when I noticed that so many towers and spires were leaning to the left! I corrected as much as I could but there comes a time in a painting when you have to say "It's enough. It's done. Sign it." And so I did. Please scroll back up to the top of the page to view the finished painting.

It was December 11th, the night of Avery's school Jubilee Concert, when I finally presented her with the painting ...

I do think she likes it

Studying the Prague Skyline