I’m about 10 hours into this drawing for “Clearing Snow” on a 30″ x 40″ canvas. It is going to be a nocturn so before drawing anything I covered the canvas with Mars Black Golden Heavy Body Acrylic. I’m drawing with a 0.7mm Montana Acrylic paint marker that has been filled with a dark gray mixture. The gray makes the drawing harder to see, but it will be easier to paint over than the white I used in my last nocturne. I am using a 2mm black marker as my “eraser”.

The back wheels on the dumptruck and the gas tank have been reworked in a slightly lighter shade of gray. At this point, I’ve pretty much finished my 6 hour punch list of truck items. Now I will do the punch list for the loader and then I can start painting.

I’ve spent so much time with this drawing that I have a pretty good idea of how I will apply the paint. As with most complex paintings, the challenge is to establish the values early on while not losing the essense of the drawing.

Using the headlights and running lights to establish the lightest lights worked well in “Linemen Working” so I will try that again here. Then I will lay in the blue gradient for the sky and its reflection on the wet ground. The sky is the key to tying together the lights of the loader bucket and the shadow areas of the truck.

Even though the painting is a nocturn, the sky will actually be pretty bright to bring out the silhouette of the truck. At the same time, the sky must be darker than the bucket. Getting this right will probably require the snow in the bucket and the brightest yellows on the loader. After that I will nail down the lightest blue on the dump truck and figure out the values in the light and shadow on the dump box. By then I should have a pretty good idea of how to fill in the rest of the painting.

It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle.