Not So Mellow Yellow

It wouldn't normally occur to me to do a painting of taxicabs, but a recent challenge on the "Different Strokes from Different Folks" blog presented a photo of a busy New York City street scene (Madison Ave). This is partially why I like to participate in this challenge, because I paint scenes I most likely would not tackle of my own volition. Unfortunately, I got busy with other paintings and didn't finish mine in time for the deadline, so I did not submit it on the DSDF blog. If you would like to see how other artists approached the same photo, click here.

As you can see, the content in the photo (below) made the task more than a little daunting, but I tackled it anyway, trying to remember to paint shapes instead of details when starting out and not get overwhelmed by trying to paint every single object.

I don't let myself look at what the other artists do until I'm all done myself - I don't want to be influenced. Now that I see their postings, it's interesting how so many of us cropped it in much the same way, myself included. Second guessing myself, I'm wondering if I should've used a taller canvas to capture the height of the buildings? Probably. (But I'm not doing it over!)

"Not So Mellow Yellow"

8"x10" oil on canvas board