Now for the final touches on my painting. Some artists would be aghast by my next decision to paint every brick… But in keeping with my intention to highlight all the details of this wonderful old building, I choose to depict the bricks accurately. The bricks are laid out in the Dutch style, and have smoothed corners due to their age and possible repointing at one time in its history. First, I drew in the bricks and painted around the edges, preserving the whites. I then went back in with a wet brush and softened all the edges of every brick.

The last step was a bit nerve wracking. I painted in all the shadows with one thin coat of paint. Since the beginning of the painting, I kept with a red, yellow and blue color scheme. So the choice of a blue grey for the white walls was deliberate. The tricky part was to paint quickly enough so I wouldn’t have dried paint seams, but carefully to control where the paint went. Once I began painting the shadows, I couldn’t stop until it was completed.

Finally, I painted in the light sconces. I tweaked and touched up several small areas over the entire painting and I was finished! Here is the final painting, Autumn Welcome.

Autumn Welcome