Yellow barn at Salem (underpainting)

Looks very promising already!!

Thank you!

I will join Voy: a good start. However I could not figure out where light comes from. Maybe it is a gloomy day?

Good question. The light in this one is very tricky. This is from a photo I took a few years ago. Studying the photo and thinking about the time of day I took it, my assumption was that the light was likely overhead behind the viewer. Which in theory, would make the left side of the barn brighter than the right side. However, there was a grove of trees casting multiple shadows on the left side of the barn. I also think that the white sandy ground on the right side of the foreground was reflecting light back onto the right side of the barn.

Hm…I hear your pain… it is indeed challenging light condition. Maybe you want to play with values in some photo editor. As idea maybe that grove on the left can be decreased to one or two trees that cast pronounced shadow on the wall? So the brightest light is in front and reflected light is not that light. Of course it is up to you which way tells the story better about this barn. Also another note sky may be turned down in value, I would assume this deep blue color there in original photo as sun is behind the viewer.

I am sure you have already converted photo to black and white and light condition still looks ambiguous. Good luck with your challenge.

Anyway I am looking forward to see the final painting.

Thanks so much for helping me to think through this. When I adjust this to B&W and play with the values, it definitely becomes more clear that the right side is definitely the lightest area of the barn. I actually just used a solar positioning calculator and it seems like the sun was probably coming from slightly behind the barn (but still pretty high overhead) when I took this photo. I think that once I start adding thicker layers on top, I'll need to brighten the sky and get stronger highlights on the trees to help rectify this. I suppose I'll need to think through how much reflected light I want to work into this painting.

Tough decisions coming your way. I am sure you will figure it out when it comes to applying colors.

I have never heard about solar positioning calculator. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Enjoy your painting process!
By the way I am at the same stage with you and learning tonal underpainting too to help me with value when I get to color. So far I did only 3 such paintings, I got a lot of troubles to resolve, but it is a nice learning curve about value.

Thanks! Yes, underpaintings are so critical. I really love how Bob Ross taught a method that got people painting right away, but I am definitely realizing that my personal tastes are drawing me to want to explore more of these traditional painting concepts. I know Bob talked a lot about "you have to have dark in order to show light" but I don't feel like I ever got a great understanding of how crucial values were just from watching the show.