Illustration: Trinity Church reflected on Hancock Building

 

This was a longer term project... over 6 weeks. I am not sure how many hours but it was 40-50 maybe. I didn't realize until this was done that is part of a series of 3, really 5 that started in 1989. I original took a black and white photo of the reflection and then years later used it for a pen and ink drawing. In the drawing the reflected parts were all done with stipple work. I gave that drawing away. something I regret since I gave it to someone I no longer have any contact with. I don't even have a photo or photocopy of that drawing. Then I did a drawing of a crane reflected on the Hancock which was fast and easy. That encouraged me to to try a large one of the old John Hancock reflected in the new one. Then I sort of forgot I did all that until I came across the original photo and decided I should maybe redraw that illustration for myself. On a visit to Boston I took all new reference photos and then... forgot about it again! Finally I started but instead of a pen and ink I went full colour. 

This has about 20 layers, the window frames are on one, the interior lights we can see through the reflection are on another and then a couple for the sky etc. When It can time to paint the church I went window by window. Since each panel had 3-6 layers I had to merge them down as I went or maybe crash the iPad with literally 1000s of layers open. I would draw for a few hours and then look at the illustration overall and see I still have something like 87 window panes to do. I kept pugging away until finally it was done. 

Below is a closeup of the part of the drawing. A both complimentary and frustrating part of doing something like this is when I send it to anyone they think it's a photograph because they are almost always looking at it on a phone and never realize the work that went into it. The other image is the original 89 photograph. I could not get the exact angle matched up because there is a lot more stuff going on there now and that angle just wasn't available and other things were blocking the view. 

Illustration: The two John Hancocks

I recently uploaded another illustration of a crane reflection on Boston's John Hancock tower. That was a practice for this one, but I have to say it didn't really prepare me. That one was done in Procreate on the iPad and went quickly as it didn't have a many precise details and this one is done in Krita and has nothing but details. It was less time than I thought to finish as I managed to get a couple days with several hours of just drawing and little distraction. About 25 hours total. 

I started with the simple stuff. The blue is a simple gradient and the window frames are simply lines on a separate layer. The trees took a little time to do. In between the blue and the window frames I made a layer for the reflection. I first tried to do all the black/dark details like windows and paint the stone under it and the lighter details but it really did not work. I tried the opposite, painting the buildings with masses of colour thinking that I would build up the details in layers and that wasn't any better. The third and final attempt was just treating each window frame almost a separate painting, only doing one and sometimes 2 of those panels at a time. This is likely the most tedious way to go about it but after doing a few hours at 200-300% magnification over a couple of days and then pulling back I liked what I saw, even though I had only actually painted a couple of square inches in all that time. I also decided not to blend colours and just let solid colours make the demarcation between light and shadow. Because the reflected elements in the final piece are quite tiny, even a 20x20 print didn't need to be totally detailed to the 8th degree and in fact would made it look muddy. I don't thing working at 300% was really necessary either but I can't help myself and I think that the details do make the piece better. 

Below: 200% detail