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 Some subjects are complicated, such as a city street which has buildings, lights, trees, pedestrians, and cars coming and going.  These scenes are appealing but I can fall into the trap of worrying about all the “stuff.”   Can I draw the cars correctly? Is my perspective OK?   Do all of the windows and bricks have to be put in?   I know from experience that when my brain starts down that road I am in trouble because worrying about rendering “stuff” will not make a good painting.  Instead I need to think of creating a composition by simplifying the busyness into shapes and values.

To steer my brain in this direction, I turn the reference and the painting upside down.  Now it is easier to see the scene as a series of interlocking shapes and values.  The corner building becomes a rectangular bluish mid-tone, which joins next to a thinner darker rectangle that is slightly lower.  Car wheels become soft-edged mid-tone orange-ish rectangles that are joined by a line that slants gently up to the left. That shape sits within a lighter triangular shape that is yellowish and pinkish with the apex slightly over to the right.  This search for connections is similar to building a jig saw puzzle.   Looking at how the shapes and values attach regardless of the object they represent allows you to paint anything.  If you trust the process you will be pleasantly surprised when you turn it right side up to and find your painting completed.

The reference and painting as they sat on my easel.

Close up of the car wheels