Buffalo Theatre District in Autumn

Buffalo Theatre District in Autumn
Acrylic on gessobord
10" x 8"
Chris Breier © 2017

Last fall I had an afternoon off from work and I spent the day walking around downtown Buffalo looking for subject matter to paint. I turned the day into a photo expedition, it's generally easier to paint city scenes in the studio. It would be impossible to set up my easel in the middle of the street to capture this perspective. The warm colors from the foliage add some much needed warm contrasts to the cool shadows created by the buildings.

Court Street

Court Street
Acrylic on paper
8” x 10”
Chris Breier © 2013

The original painting is available.
The observation deck at the top of Buffalo City Hall provides a great view of Court Street and a number of popular buildings, some of which I painted before. The Liberty Building is on the right and the Rand Building is the the one with the white and red antenna.

I started with a pencil drawing to work out all of the shapes so that I wouldn’t have to make too many corrections in the painting stage, this is important when you’re using paint in a transparent manner. To achieve the watercolor look with acrylics, I thinned the paint with water and applied it as transparent washes of color. In some areas I painted wet into wet while in other areas I allowed the paint to dry between layers. In the final stages of the painting I used titanium white to create opaque colors and used it to touch up the highlights.

You might be interested in my other paintings of the Liberty Building or the Rand Building.

Albright Knox

Albright Knox
Acrylic on archival Gessobord
5” x 7”
Chris Breier © 2015

The original painting is available.
I began by sketching the basic shapes with paintbrush and a mixture of dark brown. Drawing with a brush instead of a pencil allows me to focus on the basic shapes and ignore the details. This is a good strategy because if I draw the details too early in the process then I’ll be hesitant about painting over them.

North Division and Elm

North Division and Elm
Acrylic on archival Gessobord
5” x 7”
Chris Breier © 2015

The original painting is available.
As the title indicates, this painting is of the corner of North Division and Elm in downtown Buffalo. I had to do a little research on Google to figure out which corner this is because I took the reference photos a few months ago. I knew it was Elm Street but I wasn't sure which intersection it was. The architecture made it easy to figure out– click to view this location on Google street view.

Liberty Building

Liberty Building
Watercolor
8” x 10”
Chris Breier © 2015

The original painting is available.
Click "Read more" to watch the YouTube demo video for this painting. 
I had doubts about this painting while I was working on it, but then I was thrilled with it when it was done. My goal was to paint it in a loose manner without getting bogged down in the details. This is more difficult than it sounds because you have to figure out what the essential shapes are and ignore the tendency to paint every little window and decoration; a large brush works well for this. I prefer a round with a fine tip because it will also allow me to paint into the tight corners without having to switch brushes.

I was reading about the history of the Liberty Building on Wikipedia and I never realized that the two sculptures on top it are replicas of the Statue of Liberty, and that they’re 36 feet tall.

You might also be interested in my iPad drawing of the Liberty Building.