Following the competition of the door, I painted the door cornis and window sills. I also rewet the stairs and removed as much color as I could, since I was unhappy with the original colors. I then repainted the stairs and surrounding stone.

I started painting in the shadows and leaves on the stairs and darkened the stone work.

The railing was next and took several coats to build up the black tones. I created the black color using my standard mix of Burnt Sienna and Prussian Blue.

The windows were the next step and I took a long time considering how to best create the thin blinds and the reflected trees. I was worried about using resist because you can’t always create a perfectly straight line with it. In the end, I negative painted long strips of the reflected color using my #00 brush, and stayed away from the blinds saving the white of the paper. It was a slow process, but I was very pleased with the result.

After completing the windows, I added all the trim work around the windows and door, paying close attention to the shadows.

To be continued…