Red Horizontal Line

Darker rectangle shape on the left hand side from the last painting session is floating without purpose. As I was looking to replace the shape, a staircase across the parking lot seemed to fit the need. It has rectangular shapes I was looking for; additionally, it has a few diagonals which can add some space to this largely flattened area. I decided to end the staircase a little bit above the ground and extended only one side of the stairs to the ground to leave some space on the left side. The spaces between each step are slightly uneven on purpose.

I worked on refining the yellow building and the stairs by observing the nearby spiral staircase. The sunlight was not constant this afternoon, so I did not get to work much on the spiral shadow. Instead, I started working on adding and subtracting shapes. The brick rooftop on the right-hand side was not adding much value. When I removed the shape, the ghost image was left, which seemed more visually appealing to me. However, without this building, the chimney, suddenly looked really large. I decided to shorten it.

In the late afternoon, I started to reevaluate the lines in the painting. The painting had many strong vertical lines, diagonal lines and some curves but it had only a few short horizontal lines. It was in need of at least one strong horizontal line. I added a wire going across the green building rooftop but it only looked liked minor so I decided to scrape it off. Then I played around with an idea of a wire line across the building in different places. If the line was closer to the ground or near the rooftop, it remained as an unnecessary detail. Then I played with the line near the windows. The final line was set across two windows. The color was orange to complement the green building, but it changed into more red. The line seemed unusual and quite striking at the same time.

I still have mixed feelings about this, but it was done at that time. A new idea sometimes needs a few days to be reconsidered or to be dismissed.