I’m delighted to present my latest commissioned painting: The Long Island City Pepsi Cola Sign.

This was the source image… however, this exact view does not exist.

Moved several times, the sign now sits directly in front of a luxury development (with a slight, peculiar and deliberate cantilevered facade).

This is about as close as you can get to a shot from behind today…

So I took a few dozen cityscape shots… and this one felt the best, so I Photoshopped the sign in and off we went.

Kicking things off with a very basic sky/city divide.

I went right in with a cadmium red under painting, and, of course, the Pepsi Cola sign with an RGB-mixed black.

Setting the stage in the foreground… greens and green blues… several hues, which will eventually become cohesive with the rest of the canvas.

Big step… heavy work. Focusing on a primary darker swatch slanted across the center. I’m a sucker for major bright beams projecting from peaks… in this instance, the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings.

At this stage, it’s about defining buildings one at at time. There was also an exploration of how the tonal shifts were reflected in the sign itself with a deep red-to-RGB/black gradient.

This is one of those phases where the hours fly by and the visual progress feels minimal… particularly when addressing so many small buildings.

Empire State painted… a wholesale tonal shift in the sky helped make the background recede accordingly.

This makes my studio time amazing… Coraline, helping Daddy at the easel.

I really wanted to detail the UN, so I applied ever-so-subtle stripes of contrasting tonal shifts.

Right down to the wire, taking notes, figuring the final moves, including the biggest of them all… the addition of trees in the foreground.

Boom! Green trees become seasonal, and we are completed. Thank you Katinka, Nelson and Celestial for the commission — I hope you love living with this painting.

Coraline loves Long Island City, btdubs…