About two months ago, Derrick Evans and Rip Daniels invited me to Natchez to see the Society of Architectural Historians recognize their wonderful Yaryan project as Best in the South. We stayed in the very comfortable riverfront B&B Eidelweiss. Just below us was Natchez Under Hill which gave a nice perspective view of the bridge. The next morning I did a quick 2 panel study and got a few reference photos to help me out. I had tried to do some earlier versions but they were too far upriver and there was too much surroundings to distract from the bridge. The light was wonderful, but it was too much and I couldn’t get it all in.
The bridge structure led me to experiment with a geometric version of the scene that had some fun lessons in moving the eye around the space . Here are a few of those states. Pretty clear that I need a more subtle approach to this idea.
So in this case, I was right up adjacent to the bridge and was able to add in a barge as it traveled ever so slowly upriver. I had a gentle rain come on but was sheltered by the back of the SUV.
October and November were very busy and so not until Thanksgiving week did I have enough time off to enlarge this sketch into a painting. I did this on a 30x40” canvas and repeated the blue monochrome tonal undercoat. Working on the girders of the bridge in more detail reminded me of when Dad built a model English Man O War that stood on our mantle when I was young. It was a lot of detail work and there was no substitute for getting it all done right. In my case, I still fudged far too many lines.
Next I went over the undercoat with color and worked out the various parts. The water and sky were difficult. I ended up with something derived from painting then using saturated paper towels to get a more subtle effect. Thanks EL. But the sky and river were indistinguishable. Perhaps because I was working from an occasion when the sky was overcast and everything was kind of monochrome anyway. But I tried to separate the two. To do this, I started in with oils, and then eventually painted the whole thing over in oils.
I finished this after seeing the second installment in Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary. Tomorrow is the final part- the rooftop concert. Coincidentally, this is the second in what will be three Mississippi River bridge and barge scenes. I already have done New Orleans and now have Natchez. I have sketches from Tom Lee Park of a scene I want to do in Memphis. So next stop, Mempho.
About a month later, I came back and reworked the foreground and adjacent current.
