The making of the painting "The Fife House"
Here is an example of how I start off a painting with a drawing in burnt umber using a brush to draw it in with, then I go over it with the colors I want to use. This particular one is of a former mayor's house in a wooded area of the city not far from the University grounds and Hospital. The family of the Fife's is to whom I write about, they both (husband and wife) became Mayors of Charlottesville some time before I arrived here. There house was designed and built with the same labors' who built Monticello they just came into town and hired out their talents for private contracts to whomever would employ them. The Fife family did so and this house which still stands today inside a wooded lot on Cherry Ave and 10th Street. I lived for years in the area of it and never even knew it existed until lately due to the woods that surround it. But here you can see how I work in a brown to figure out what belongs where and then once I get it all 'sized in' as