Studio Time

This is a stretcher. It is 46 by 62 inches. It’s made of wood that’s been sitting in my garage for a year or so. Before that, it adorned the rafters in my brother-in-law’s garage for an untold number of years. It’s strong and capable and as of today, reborn to a new purpose in life. It is incredibly well seasoned.

Yesterday, I spent an hour or so, at the picnic table in the back yard, cutting the components of this in 100 degree heat. It was not fun. This morning, I put everything together. That wasn’t a huge amount of fun but at least it’s a reasonable temperature in the studio.

Normally, I’d use one by twos for the frame and attach quarter-round to the top of that to hold the canvas away from the bars and prevent “ghosting”. (The wood behind the canvas can change the look of that area. It can cause lines that you don’t want as well as just being a pain in general.) The profile on this molding has a slight ridge on it that should serve the same purpose very nicely. It’s a bit heavier than one by twos. Given the size of this, that’s a real benefit. The braces are one by twos. It’s held together with small, hardboard triangles, nails and a lot of Gorilla Wood Glue.

This is our friend, the stretcher, dressed in a painting that has been hanging around the studio waiting for me to get around to building a stretcher for it for a few months.

I’m not exactly happy with this the way it is. I’d intended to play with various sizes of forms and do something similar to “On the Street“. I managed to get the top half working fairly well but things sort of petered out as I got to the bottom and the larger forms.

This is drawn in water-soluble graphite that’s sealed with acrylic medium. The color is washed in with a rag soaked in paint that’s been heavily diluted with water. The yellow was brushed in.

I let things drip thinking that might add a bit of interest to the lower half. Frankly, I think it just made a mess. I’m going to have to spend some time with pastels or a paint brush and see if I can get this working. There are a few elements to this that I really like. I just need to add a few more. I’m sure I’ll manage something…

Oh… the reason I’m starting so many paintings (not that it’s really unusual.) Is that have a show coming up in a few months. I’ve been working small for a while but I’d like a few larger pieces to go along with things.