Sketch for Mill and River at Night

Sketch for Mill and River at Night (Originally uploaded by randubnick)

This is a digital sketch that I made this morning using the Pocket Painter program on my handheld computer (PDA). I am about to start a series of paintings of the mill and river in Manchester, New Hampshire, and this is one of my ideas for a painting. This is a night view of the mill and river, with the lighted windows reflected in the water. I have been thinking about this idea, which is roughly based on a view that I saw through a window on a recent trip to Manchester. I did take a photo of that view a few weeks ago, but didn't look at the photo today before I made the sketch. Instead, I worked from memory and imagination. (Tonight I found the photo to see how close I came; I will post it tomorrow.) Even though this sketch is rough and unfinished, it helped to work on it. Now I have a better idea of what I want the painting to look like because this is going to be the basic composition. Although I will make some changes, this is the basic color scheme. I am going to use oil bars for the painting, so of course it will look very different from this digital image. I don't really need to go further with this digital sketch, but I like it for its own sake, so I may return to it and finish it later on.