Progress: Fish Factory 5

Now I've taken the big step of adding "true" color to the underpainting.

This is my first pass at getting the real color down on the canvas, and trying to match my value decisions. It's not very detailed, I'm blocking in the average color of each area. In the next pass I'll refine that and add more detail. Now that I've taken a photo and posted it, I can see that I forgot to do the bottom of the pilings.

That cast roof-shadow in the upper right is way too hard; will have to soften that in the next iteration. I'm enthralled with the water color, and I'm going to try not to change it very much.

One of my goals on this painting is to not let myself get too detailed in one little area before I finish making a pass. This takes a lot of self-discipline for me, because I want to get right into painting in railings and highlights and little waves and stuff with a liner brush.

Here's the black-and-white version; looks pretty good. Light areas still need punching up. Not too much—it's a mostly mid-tone value scheme with more darks than lights.

This is a much more complicated process than I usually do — I'm taking more steps and doing a LOT more underpainting. Also the canvas is so much larger than I'm used to, so I never mix up enough paint at one time. That might be an unexpected benefit; it keeps me from using too much of the same color just because I've got it on my palette. That is another Carol Marine tip: if you mix up a lot of paint, you'll use it even if it's not right, just because it's there.