STEP BY STEP PAINTING DEMONSTRATION BY ROLAND LEE

1. I love this little chapel in Pine Valley Utah and I have painted it several times. This is how it appeared some years ago. There are a number of big evergreens that were planted and have grown up on both east and west sides of the Chapel blocking this view today.

You can see the light pencil guidelines which I made with a 4H pencil. I was pretty careful with the drawing, as I usually am with architectural subjects. I begin with the sky area and while it's drying I lay in the shadow side of the building letting warm and cool pigments mingle together to create a lively gray.

2. I loosely lay in the distant foothills and start to establish the green trim around the windows on the shadow side. Now I've got my whole range of values from light to dark, which will guide me as I complete the rest of the painting.

3. I now move forward and develop the big old Cottonwood tree in the foreground and a few of the shrubs on the ground. You can see that I am using negative painting to leave a few of the tree branches which hang forward in front of the other foliage.

4. Now it's just a matter of working back and forth from distance to middle ground to foreground as I start to bring the painting into focus reserving my darkest darks until last.

A lot of people assume painting the picket fence in the negative would be a huge chore, but it is not. It would have been a tougher job to try to mask it out or use opaque whites. I usually shun masking fluid or other methods thay stray from the traditional transparent techniques only because I think it looks contrived. I will admit there are times when it might be more effective to use it, but it's not for me.

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