"Veiled District" (24x18 oil on panel) painting process

Greetings,
Today's post is a scene from San Francisco's financial district. When I lived in the Bay Area (2011-2014), I would periodically spend several hours walking around various parts of SF, looking for good photo reference and inspiration.

detail

First stage. A loose start with the knife. (Apologies for the blurry process photos):

Next stage. Before diving into detail, I usually start very loose with my cityscapes. I want to know if my color and value scheme will work before investing time in the precise proportions and perspective that will make things identifiable. In this case, I'm creating an atmosphere of fog (even though there wasn't much in real life), which involves desaturating and shrinking the value range of the background. At this point I am reasonably satisfied with the effect, and I begin refining the focal car in the foreground:

Next stage. By isolating the intense darks (full value range) to the lower part of the painting, that area draws more focus.

Next stage. My strategy is to exaggerate both the cooler colors of scene overall and the warm colors of the taillights. By isolating the greatest warmth to the car lights (and the slightly warm stripe of crosswalk flanking the car), I create focus on the car.:

Next stage:

And the finished painting, "Veiled District" (24x18 oil on panel, 2012):

Thanks for reading! -David

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