Painting #54, we're getting there

I am trying to get this blog done, somehow, I just deleted everything that I typed so now I have to do it all over again. I procrastinated today getting my painting done, didn't get to it until 8:50, and took me until 12:00 to finish it. Should have gotten to it sooner but it is my birthday, after all. Technically, that's shouldn't be an excuse, but it's my day and that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I didn't feel like painting on the previous painting I had started, I am not sure when I will feel like getting to that one, so Grandma and Aunt Gladys are on the back burner for the time being.

This painting is of the Litchfield Grain Mill, Litchfield MI, I have painted the front of this building (or I should say part of this building and I have a couple of others in progress), I liked all the junk and the textures here, and the part of the building where the trucks get the grain loaded was just a dark hole, so I zoomed up on it in an other photo and used that for the detail. The Roof with all the windows was quite a challenge, I do like the Victorian look of this building and it is one of the most unusual Mills in the State of Michigan, at least the most unique one that I've seen. I love the rear view of this building where you see all the working junk sitting around, so I decided to do this view today.

I started with the sky, wet in wet and when I got a good look at the effect, I decided I had waited too long, or, that I had added the white for the clouds too late, and it looked too hard edged, so, I got the fine mist spray bottle out and misted the sky. Once the sky was set, then I laid in the shapes of the building and started laying in flat washes for the different colors I saw. Once I got the first washes all over the whole painting. Then I started fine tuning areas, I wasn't sure that I wanted to put all the detail in, but it was too flat for my taste, so I started to lay in the small details like the windows and the clapboards, and it progressed from there, just layer by layer, I like this little painting and sure hope you do too.