[mattvogt]

I am working on this for a charity art auction. My local town has a bridge. I'll paint how it looked in the late 1800's.



Any comments would be very much appriciated throughout this journey! hehehe thx!

More to come!

Cheers,
-m

[FallDamage]

Do you have any photographic reference to work from? If not, any structural plans or descriptions from the town archive? Even if the bridge has long since collapsed, taking a few shots of the area it used to occupy will go a long way towards prompting your imagination.

If you do have some ref, maybe you should post it here too, to get a better idea of what suggestions would be helpful for your purposes?

[mattvogt]

Thank you sooo much for your advice FallDamage. I did just as you said and I gathered some archive pics as well as shot on site. Both helped tremendously in rendering further details.



That's the newest version! Let me know what you think as I further develop her!

Cheers,
Matt

[FallDamage]

No problem. Big improvement over your initial sketch. Have you had a look at this?

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/135/120/ It may give you some ideas.

Make sure that in addition to your site reference, you have a time of day reference too for color and temperature relationships, and that you hold consistent throughout the piece (I screw that up a lot)



Maybe also find an artist's rendering of similar subject matter that you respect and analyze how that person has treated certain similar subjects.

[Lakka]

Falldamage thanks for the url, really helped me also.

And now on subject, I like what your heading towards to, but I dislike the shine from the cars' window.

The water (under those blacklines) looks pretty neat already, also the mountains in the back look nice. Might wanna try fading the mountain a bit? But that's just how I see it. They look good as they are though.

Keep at it, remember to post your progress!

btw.. had to type in that I like the way the place you live at looks like

[mattvogt]

FallDamage: Your guidance gives off a timeless impression to me. Such tips are incredibly valued. The landscape 101 link is a goldmine and your comments regarding proper research and taking action based on knowledge is exactly what I needed to hear - thanks! Actually, in fact, after reading your comments, doing some study, painting, and reading them again, I got kinda choked up that I did not see the potential results. Thanks for such thought provoking challenges!

Lakka: Thanks for your comments. I referred back to them as I further rendered details. I hope I didn't let you down! Man Chilliwack's the bomb here in BC Canada hahaha. I guess it's how you look at things. Here's a cool img I snapped. You can kinda see the river (we tube it in the summer)



And Lakka! Here's a lazyman's process overview:
* http://mattvogt.com/post/vedderBridge-01.jpg
* http://mattvogt.com/post/vedderBridge-02.jpg
* http://mattvogt.com/post/vedderBridge-03.jpg
* http://mattvogt.com/post/vedderBridge-04.jpg
* http://mattvogt.com/post/vedderBridge-05.jpg
* http://mattvogt.com/post/vedderBridge-06.jpg

She's being entered into a local fundraiser art auction. Printing's Friday! Any comments are much appriciated as I will be applying final touches tomorrow (no matter how harsh)!

Thanks for checking it out C&C is loved!

[Affected]

All the details in the landscape look quite nice, but the overall impression is a bit flat. Maybe too much detail too evenly spread out, also the lighting doesn't necessarely bring the dimensions out in the best way: the brighter parts of the left side of the image and the right side of the image draw somewhat equal amounts of attention to themselves. Maybe try darkening the hill/mountain and trees to the right a bit? Also I'd recommend re-sketching that character, it's pretty central and right now not really very correct. Get some refs of anglers if you don't have any, I'm pretty sure holding the rod out with one hand like that is not very common... But a big improvement over the first sketch already.

[Tzan]

Hooray for diagonal bracing

Looking at the first images I thought there was no way that the bridge is built like that, it would just fall over.

But you added more bracing, so the structural engineer in me is happy again

I like your style.