The evolution of an artist’s style and technique is always the story of an interesting journey. Often, there is an early commonality among artists; a childhood love of drawing and reinforcement by a parent or teacher. Later, a network of experiences and opportunities forge a unique path. Art always makes sense in retrospect, a culmination of many unique proclivities and influences.

Grand Street and Broadway, watercolor, 48 x 32" (121 x 81 cm) This large work captures the empty wide expanse of lower Broadway on a rainswept dawn. The high horizon line creates a broad take into the distance of the reflective ground, a main focus of the painting. The central lampost bisects the composition and acts as a spatial barometer against the receding space. One of my favorite lamposts of the many I’ve painted! Creating the overall glow and movement of light was created with several initial wet-in-wet washes before any local colors were applied.

 

Upon first viewing my work, people often ask, “Why this approach to watercolor? Why architecture?” Simply put, my mother took genuine pride in my childhood drawings, and my father had a love for architecture. He knew the anecdotal stories behind the buildings we saw in our New York City neighborhood, and his stories engendered a sense of mystery, of hidden secrets behind the facades. This romantic sense of wonder instilled by a unique feeling of place is what transported me as a child, and is ultimately what I seek to recapture in my paintings.

Roman Rooftops, watercolor, 30 x 52" (76 x 132 cm) This panoramic view from the Campo de' Fiori captures the beauty and variety of Roman churches and towers. The piece also features the multitude of the hidden rooftop gardens nestled among the old structures. La Dolce Vita! This large cloud filled sky presented a real challenge, and required over a dozen wettings and rewetting to develop the complex layering and soft edges of the cloud forms.

 

As a student, I had the serendipitous benefit of two influential teachers at the City College of New York—Dr. Jacob Rothenberg in art history and Prof. Bill Behnken in drawing. They instilled in me a love of the Old Masters through their passion and depth of knowledge. In the same period, I went to Amsterdam for the first of many visits. Besides the thrill of being there as an 18-year-old, and the attendant pleasures, I became enthralled by the Rijksmuseum, and by Dutch 17th-century art in general. It was the combination of the great beauty and technique of Baroque painting with the remarkable accessibility of Dutch art that captured me. The cityscapes and tavern scenes never looked down at the viewer, but invited them in. We are one of you, they seemed to say. Then, upon leaving the museum, you would walk into the cityscapes you had just encountered on the walls. It seemed a magical confluence of art and life, and I was hooked! Over the following several years I was fortunate to have the opportunity to travel frequently and to study the art of past masters of landscape and cityscape in depth.

Stuyvesant Street, watercolor, 35 x 23" (88 x 58 cm) This East Village working class facade on one of Manhattan’s oldest streets is redolent with expressiveness. The unrenovated, or “benign neglect,” creates a multitude of suggested stories. From the Boot Scrapes on the left and right, the worn stairs and door and the interior glow, it speaks of a sense of condensed experience. The wear and tear of the many who have moved within. 

 

I am somewhat of a purist as relates to transparent watercolor. I use no gouache or opaque paint, all my highlights are created by the white of the paper, and so are painted around using darker colors. I do a finished drawing in hard graphite, 4H and 6H most commonly, over which I glaze as many as 20 layers of wash to build my darks. The hard graphite, once treated with an overall initial wetting, bonds to the fiber of the paper and so does not lift or smear when color washes are applied over it.

The art of cityscapes is essentially one of spatial construction. My painting process is an attempt to create a convincing sense of depth using color transitions, movement of light and shadow, linear and atmospheric perspective and built up textures to achieve a tangible sense of space and place.  

My Art in the Making East End Cottage

Reference Photo

 

Stage 1

Stage 1  Pencil Drawing

A complete 6H graphite drawing is done in preparation for painting. The hard graphite and initial wet washes fix the drawing to the fiber of the Arches paper and so the washes of color do not lift the pencil work.

Stage 2

Stage 2  Creating the Sky

The sky has been laid in using a wet-in-wet application to achieve the soft edges of the clouds. The sliver of the background bay has also been painted using wet-on-dry washes.

My Approach and Techniques

My technique emphasizes simple materials and a limited palette, employing five warm and five cool colors for a total palette of the 10 colors listed in my materials list. I think of color simply as warm and cool; cool colors tend to visually recede, while warm colors tend to come forward. I have tried to develop a simple approach to painting complex subjects. Pure transparent watercolor can be (overly) simplified as an understanding of four applications, in this order:

• Wet-on-wet: Pre-wetting the paper and bleeding large washes of color over the work.
• Wet-on-dry: Applying local colors in washes on dry paper to achieve clean edges on specific elements; i.e., the red of a car.
• Dry brush or scumbling: The modeling of texture and details over the initial washes.
• Point-of-brush: Using a fine point round brush to crisp up edges and reinforce details.

Successful watercolor painting, from my approach, requires solid drawing skills over which those four applications are applied. Understanding the sequences of this technique, how the various layers will combine to complement one another, is achieved through years of continual painting. 

Stage 3

Stage 3  Shadows and Textures

A blue/violet light wash to reinforce the shadows has been painted, and the ground plane has been laid in using warm and cool speckled or dotted brushwork to capture the pebbled textures.

Stage 4

Stage 4  Finishing Right-Side Buildings

The right-hand buildings are completed, and the deep greens of the middle bushes laid in, establishing the dark funnel of shadow opening onto the bay.

Stage 5

Stage 5  Cottage

Here are detail photos of the cottage on the left-hand side in both the pencil and painted phases.

Stage 6

Stage 6  Finished Artwork

East End Cottages, watercolor, 14 x 11" (35 x 27 cm)

Note that the sky is different, the chimney on the left is raised and the phone wires have been eliminated from the reference photo—subtle design changes.