King West Streetcars
SEPTEMBER 2010 | Acrylic on Canvas | 16″ x 20″ | View Larger »
This is a view looking east along King Street West towards York Street in the heart of Toronto’s financial district. On the left is the Exchange Tower building, and on the right is the York Centre. Two streetcars are passing, with the closer one moving away from the viewer. Also shown is a taxi and a cyclist. Somewhat surprisingly, there are no pedestrians or regular cars in sight.
This painting breaks new ground for me for a few reasons. First, it is my largest painting to date at 16 by 20 inches. Working on a larger surface with quick-drying acrylics brought some new challenges because the paint in one area would often dry before I could blend it into the next. I tried using a retarding medium to slow the drying speed but found that it gave the paint a waxy and blotchy texture, so I abandoned that idea early on and replaced it with simple persistence and layering. On the other hand, I did like the way the larger canvas made it easier to add detail without resorting to the use of a microscopic brush.
The second reason this painting breaks new ground is that it’s the first time I’ve painted from a photo I did not take myself. The original view for this image is actually cropped from a Google Map street view landscape. I’d prefer to take my own photos, but I doubt that as a pedestrian I would have been able to stand in the middle of the busy street to take this photo and also survive long enough to paint it!
Since this painting took me over a month, I snapped some photos of the progress as I went along. Below are a couple much earlier images of the painting. I painted everything first in neutral grays before layering on the colour near the end. I was trying to avoid the cartoonishly bright colours of some of my other paintings, but I think I only marginally succeeded with that goal — those vibrant TTC reds are just too tempting. That said, I am mostly happy with the final result of this painting.
