The familiar color of dirty concrete.

And the color combination to make it.

I finished the first painting in a series I’m calling Under Over Passes 2023.

I figure I’ll be drawing and painting highways forever, so might as well group them by year in the title. The 2023 group is a series of 5 paintings.

This is the I-35 overpass at Enfield in downtown Austin. When I took this photo I was sitting at the northbound 35 light, about to take a left on 15th St. to head into the city. It’s one of my favorite intersections (do other people have favorites?) and this painting captures why: the depth of shadow in the Texas sun, the rhythm of the pillars and the familiar color of dirty concrete.

I use Photoshop to help me pull out the colors from the photograph and then I mix them up. Here’s my paint palette:

The colors above were made from 6 base colors: french ultramarine, burnt umber, white, phthalo blue, bismuth yellow and cadmium red. All of the concrete and shadow colors are made with only the first three: ultramarine, umber and white make the most beautiful grays.

It’s 15x30” and is done in oil paint. This is the smallest painting of the 5 this year. I wanted to dip my toe in on a small one first. The next one is over twice this size and is currently on the easel getting its pencil drawing.

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things worth sharing

1. VIDEO: A 7-minute journey through jazz history and the iconic album cover designs that came out of the Blue Note label.

2. RECIPE: Feta Tapenade Tarte Soleil - I made this recently, a delish app/snack food of tear away pastry full of olives and sundried tomatoes. There’s also a feta cheese dip. YUM.

3. QUOTE: “We don’t want to live a frivolous life, we don’t want to live a superficial life. We want to be serious with each other, with our friends, with our work. That doesn’t necessarily mean gloomy or grim, but seriousness… is something that we are deeply hungry for, to take ourselves seriously and to be able to enjoy the nourishment of seriousness, that gravity, that weight.” -Leonard Cohen