Studio Time

This is the sketch of “A Sunny Day on the South 40” It’s been transferred to a panel and drawn in a bit. It’s unprimed canvas that’s adhered to hardboard with acrylic medium. Basically, it’s going to go straight to paint. This is just to give me an idea of the way things need to work.

I decided that our heroine here… a farm girl caught mid-frolic out in a pasture, wasn’t really likely to be prancing about in the nude. So, in an effort to alleviate a bit of that “drawn on the wall in a service station bathroom” look and make things a little more realistic; I decided she needed a frilly, lace top. I’ve never actually painted a frilly, lace top so we’ll see how that goes. I doubt it will end up being much more than the suggestion of a frilly, lace top.

My graphite paper has given up the ghost after many years of faithful service, so… I transferred this by rubbing pastels on to the back of the print. That always leaves things a little messy. The lines are darkened with watercolor pencil. I’ve shaded things a bit just to get them started… I sprayed it with water to set the drawing, further start the shading process and give me a few random drips. This is wet in the photo.

I’ll give this a coat of clear acrylic a bit later just so it doesn’t soak up huge amounts of paint, sand it and go straight to acrylic for the under-painting. I have some ideas as to how this will go. As usual, we’ll see what happens.