This is something much different than my usual artwork. This is Georgetown University, as seen from Theodore Roosevelt Island National Park. It is painted with acrylics on a 16×20 inch canvas, and is based on my own photograph of this scene taken in 2011.

The building on the far left (red brick with blue-gray roof) is Village C West. The building next to that (red brick with white ornamentation) is Ryan Hall. The strange grey concrete building with the big rectangular openings is the Joseph Mark Lauinger Memorial Library. The two church spires are part of the main campus: Healy Hall. On the far right is the Car Barn, which used to be a terminal for streetcars but is now part of the campus. This is part of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which spans over the Potomac River with its beautiful arches. This is not part of the key bridge, but is actually perpendicular to it, which is hard to tell from the photograph. This is Whitehurst Freeway.

This was the very first time I have painted a cityscape, and it was something on my to-do list for years, since the photo was taken. Recently I had a gap in my commission schedule, and felt my skill level was up to the challenge, so I dove in. I started by making a rough outline sketch of all of the buildings, then transferred them onto the canvas using graphite paper. I then painted the entire canvas in a dilute medium grey wash, to provide a neutral base to paint on as well as to desaturate the colors a bit. I wanted it to look more natural, and painting directly on white tends to make the colors too harsh.

I painted the sky first, using a mixture of light permanent blue and violet blue mixed with titanium white, and made sure to leave the area near the horizon lighter and less saturated than the rest of the sky. The reference photograph had cirrus clouds in the sky, and I left hints of that in the painting without making them too obvious.

Next, I painted the buildings in the far background (on the left and center). Most were painted with mixtures of colors rather than being straight from the tube. On top of this background of buildings came the first layer of trees, which was done with my army green mixture with ivory black for shading and some pale yellow for highlights. On top of these trees came the next layer of buildings in the middle foreground (the red brick building on the far right and the ones just to the left of it). Then I painted another layer of trees and bushes, then the lamp posts and fence. Then onto the bridge. The Key Bridge is the grey-brown one on the left with the arches. I made a new color mixture for this I called ‘concrete’ and it was a mix of unbleached titanium and raw umber. After that, the Whitehurst Freeway (the pale cream area of what looks like the bridge on the right). Then there was another layer of trees on top of that. Last was the Potomac river on the bottom, with some reflections from the buildings, trees, and bridges above.

This painting was a nice break from pet portraits and a nice challenge for me. I focused on the shapes rather than the details, and I think it turned out well for a first time landscape painting. The trees were fun to paint, and it was interesting to paint each layer on top of each other as I progressed through the different layers in the background and foreground. The reference photo had nice lighting from the side, which really makes the buildings look three dimensional, and I replicated that in my painting.