Savin Rock Gazebo

I frequent the boardwalk in West Haven.  Some parts are better than others; closer to the mouth of the river it is littered with 2 inch wide gaps (which make for a pretty uncomfortable bike ride) while other parts are beautifully paved and lined with seniors playing Bocce ball.  Now that I think of it that might make for an interesting sketch, but on this day I found a gazebo... 

 I thought it would be easy to find something to sketch at the beach but it took at least 15-20 minutes to find this area.  I underestimated the importance of being, something hard to find at the beach.  A few reasons why I chose this area was because it had a beachy feel (water in the background), architectural elements (I like drawing and painting buildings), and organic elements (the plants in the middleground add a nice textural opposition against the gazebo's straight lines).

Here is my initial sketch done with a graphite pencil.  Unlike the wood stove sketch I showed you a couple weeks ago, I took my time on the pencil sketch.  It was probably a half-hour drawing and a half-hour painting.  Take a mental note of the lighting.  Right now almost the entire gazebo is covered in sunlight while the sky is mostly blue and gray.

In this picture you can see the difference of the lighting in just an hour.  Now the sunset has come into play and the sky in the background has changed from a light blue to a light red (or pink as many people have told me; I've always felt pink is rather brash and bold while light red is barely there, often going unnoticed.)  YES..  I am anthropomorphizing colors.  Get used to it.  Also, the gazebo is no longer in sunlight.

Here is the finished product along side my palette I clipped to my sketchbook.

While that initial sketch took just an hour, an artist's work is never done!  I decided to touch it up while waiting for my clothes to dry at the laundromat.  One of the ladies working there paid me a compliment and then preceded to tell me I should take some classes... I'm not sure how I feel about that.  Anyways, I added some darker values behind the gazebo and made the sky darker while adding some red near the horizon.