Painting a Gasoline Station on Location

It was a Saturday with a gray, overcast sky and 50% chance of rain. I went out a few minutes before 2:00 PM, and tried to look for a subject in our neighborhood. A Shell gas station caught my attention. I knew painting it would be hard. Too many details, values seemed hard to figure out, plus the perspective. I took the risk and thought maybe I should give it a try.

I used casein (cadmium red pale, cadmium yellow light, ultramarine blue deep, and titanium white) on an A5 sketchbook. I started by sketching the subject with a water-soluble colored pencil. It took me a while to measure the objects and get the perspective correctly.

Just as I was about to block in the colors, it started to rain. Good thing I brought an umbrella and extra spring clamps. I was able to attach it to my tripod and both my hands were free again.

I used transparent washes first, as it really helped in getting the texture of the concrete. I used opaque colors as I tried to fill in the big shapes and details.

I was planning to finish it in two hours, but it seemed too difficult for me. Three hours after I started, I was only halfway through and it was getting dark. I did not have the luxury of coming back for another day. Then the station’s lights turned on. The values and the shadows changed dramatically. I thought it was pointless to continue, maybe I should just go home and copy from a reference photo I took earlier. My legs and feet were painful too.

But I chose to continue and finish it on location.

I used my phone as a flashlight so I could see what I was doing. The rain started to fall again, but thankfully it was only light and quick. I worked on the painting for an another hour. I painted over the gray sky with dark blue and made the posts and pumps warmer to make them stand out. I painted the rails in the middle of the road as well as part of the pavement in the foreground using alternating opaque and transparent layers. I tried to add the power lines using a water-soluble colored pencil in the end. The pencils don’t work as well as they do in gouache and watercolor, so I used water-soluble wax pastels (Neocolor 2) instead. I also tried to use the spotlight effect in one of the pumps.

I finished the painting after five hours, at exactly 7:00 PM. It was not as I good as I wanted it to be, but I was quite happy that I was able to finish it. Good thing I persisted and chose not to quit. The casein’s properties also helped, as the painting did not look too dark.

I made a short video from the few clips I was able to take: https://youtu.be/PWNnUP-DNEU