Slowly blocking in...

I am still sick, but got a little progress on blocking in the painting. The crowd is going to be made up of many layers. I am still considering exactly how I want the pavement to look.

Underpainting

With this stage of the painting, I am knocking down the white of the canvas and preparing for the layers to come later. I'm planning to make the pavement a bit darker than in the studies so the value range will be compressed. The stained underpainting will show through in gaps rather than white spots.

A Start

The canvas for the actual painting is a 30" x 40" Belgian Linen. It has a medium to smooth texture with some interesting imperfections that have a character I like. (I think they are called "slubs".)  Here is the sketch with some darks added.  

Studies

Here are the studies I produced for the painting:

The first was a 12" x 18" study. Chris Horner is moved to the right some from the reality of the photo reference.

The second study was a 12" x 12" with a little more detail in the moto. Going into it, I thought I might like this format better.  The spacing is between Horner and the guys is actually realistic, but as a whole, the format seemed cramped.