Not only haven’t I posted much lately, I haven’t painted either. But I have been busy. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks drawing and completing painting designs. Normally, when I finish the design for a new painting, I can’t wait to pick up the brushes and pitch in.
As an exercise, I’ve been pushing the drawings on the canvases instead of my usual practice of using simple cartoon outlines. I am completing the designs on several paintings before I start painting. This immersion in drawing provides great synergies.
Here are two “finished” drawings. These designs will be hidden by the paint but I intend to let parts of the drawing peek through the final painting.
I have one other painting in this cycle to “finish” before I start painting. These drawings are done with the simplest of materials–lead pencil. Both of these paintings are part of my Main Street series.
This painting contains four complete figures.
The scale of this painting is different; the figures are close to lifesize. On this one, I’ve broken up the ground.
As always, I’m also preparing new canvases. In this photo of a corner of my studio, I’ve just finished constructing the stretcher on the table. Additionally, I put the lead oil ground on the large white canvas in the background. When the white ground is completely dry, I’ll apply and other ground tinted with raw umber. The other large canvas already has the raw umber ground. It’s dry and ready for a design.
