Spent this last session trying to get things to work together, fiddling with colors and just trying to get this painted in. I gave one of the kids a partially eaten bag of candy.
I’m sure you can see that there are still signs of a struggle in a few areas. That (now) orange thing in the lower center is giving me a hard time. The rest of it’s falling into place fairly easily.
Colors are the same as yesterday.
I decided that there needed to be a second hobby horse in here since that’s probably what hobby horses dream about and since there just happens to be an adaptable form, complete with rider, right in the middle of this.
The screeching face now belongs to “Mom”, who’s understandably stressed at the sight before her. I spent some time filling in that corner, hoping to draw a bit of attention away from the face and pull it into the painting. It will definitely change once I switch to oils.
The “mother and child” grouping are awaiting the child’s turn on the dream horse… add some screaming children all around; cheering our wooden pony’s dream “self” over the finish line… You got a rocking horse’s dream.
Colors are the same as yesterday with the addition of Sennelier’s Terra Verte and Raw Umber.
This is a painting based on “A Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H Lawrence. …A little bit anyway. Ok… Not at all. It did help inspire the title though. There is an actual rocking horse in there (It’s right next to the eye.) It looks a little bit like a baby reindeer right now. It will probably continue to look like a baby reindeer.
This is the result of a fairly long session. I think I’ve managed to get some of the lower half of this working. I’m using acrylic. It’s easier to sketch with. I managed to get a sort of “mother and child” group going. Something of a recurring theme with me. …There’s a couple of figures that I like. That screeching face up in the right-hand corner is going to undergo some major changes… one of which may have it leaving the painting altogether.
There’s still considerable work to do before I’ll feel comfortable with moving onto oils. I do like this a hell of a lot better than I did when I started with it.
Colors: Sennelier’s Phthalocyanine Blue and Venetian Red, Golden’s Open Acrylic Cadmium Orange, Bone Black, Cadmium Red Medium, Ultramarine Blue, Phthalocyanine Green, Dioxazine Purple and Cadmium Yellow Medium and Utrecht’s Titanium White.
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.
Studio Time 