14" x 10" (36 x 25 cm)
Watercolor and pencil on Arches 300-lb CP paper
© 2009 Steve Penberthy
I based this painting on a photo from the Library of Congress' Flickr site. The woman's expression was really appealing, so I thought it might be fun to paint. Mr. & Mrs. Lyman were Polish tobacco farmers near Windsor Locks, Connecticut; they were photographed by Jack Delano in September of 1940. The photo is part of a Library of Congress (LOC) photo collection of the U.S. Resettlement Administration, the Farm Security Administration (FSA), and later the Office of War Information (OWI). The most active years were 1935-1943, and the entire collection was transferred to the LOC in 1944.
The painting is much simplified as compared to the original photo. I restricted myself to a limited palette this time, which I think worked well; I like the color harmony that resulted. The palette includes raw sienna, burnt sienna, french ultramarine, carbazole violet, perm. alizarin crimson, and Payne's gray.
Here's my original pencil drawing:
There's other stuff at Flickr.
