Playhouse Square Trip is, as the name implies, part of the Playhouse Square series. The design is based on several photos I took during one of my photo sessions at the Square. As readers know, I’ve been working on the series for a year or thereabout. The Square is heavily frequented by office workers, visitors, and theatergoers…
I’ve nearly finished the underpainting of Man Pushing a Baby Carriage. I showed the initial drawing for this painting in a recent post. By underpainting, I mean the first sessions during which I start modeling the dark tones and apply local colors. I use the neutral ground for lights, as on the shoulders of…
Living in NE Ohio, I had to the visit the RNC. I spent two hours yesterday in downtown Cleveland. I took a lot of photos but I was still surprised when I got home and discovered that I’d taken 1300 photos! I’m always taking photos for use in my paintings, of course, and I was…
The painting, Girl in Purple Boots II, is on the easel. In the background is the recently started Women in Sandals. Girl in Purple Boots II is based on several–three–photos that were taken at an intersection in mid-town Manhattan . It’s 44″ x 60″. Women in Sandals is also 44″ x 60″. I spent more time drawing…
After completing the cartoon for this painting, I transferred it to a canvas, as you can see in the photo. A cartoon, I remind you, is a drawing used as a template for a painting. Cartoons are made to the exact dimension of the target surface. Typically, they are used for large paintings and murals but are often…
I spent most of the day drawing, getting two new paintings ready. This afternoon I started stretching canvases. I plan to stretch 6. I’m a crackerjack canvas stretcher, I’ve done it so often, but even I can learn new tricks. I used to put the staples on the stretcher edge but I’ve started putting the…
I finished the drawing for 3 Women in Sandals quickly. It took three days to finish the underpainting. 3 Women in Sandals is 44″ x 60,” a format I use a lot. I couldn’t decide on a name for the painting even after working on it several days. My working name for it, 16-5-1, was the…
I’ve stretched and gessoed a large number of canvases this week. Soon, my store of stretchers will be exhausted. I’m concentrating on several dimensions: 36″ x 48″, 40″ x 50″, and 44″ x 60″. I have 6-10 paintings in each of those dimensions in various states of finish. We celebrated my wife’s birthday yesterday–porterhouse steaks,…
This is the state of my palette after taking it from overnight storage. I clean the palette each morning with a scrapper and remove dried colors. Often, if no colors dried overnight, I’ll start right in. My medium is fast drying and there’s no danger of previous mixtures affecting new ones. This homemade palette has…
My journey with Picnic is meandering. Originally, there were a lot of figures in the background. Then, deciding that was too distracting, I took out many of them. That’s when the painting stalled. Eventually, I realized that the mass of background figures is what attracted me to the subject. So I put back the painted-over…
Sometimes I have to sneak up on a painting. It took me awhile to identify what was bugging me about Break Time. The background behind the right-hand figure didn’t please me, so I corrected it today. In the process, I painted over part of the figure’s hair, which is OK because the hair wasn’t finished…
I am into the overpainting phase with Parade. although the surface is still very matte. No part is exactly done. Yesterday’s morning session went poorly. I couldn’t see. It happens. Sometimes when I take up a painting that I struggled with previously, the solution is obvious. How could I have missed it? When artists talk…
I went to our Main Street three separate times to take photographs for this composition. I won’t bore you with why it took three trips. I finally got photos I can use and cobbled together several for the design for this new oil, Woman Listening to a Phone on Main Street. I’ll probably change the title.…
Main Street #1 is another painting based on Vermilion’s Main St. I already finished Main Street #2 even though I started it after #1. I plan several more paintings around the same theme. I’m still not satisfied with parts of it so until I am, I’ll keep at it.
These small still lifes are based on photos I took during a trip to Colorado with my son, Garth. I started both of them the same morning, the upper one first. The larger one is 24″ x 30″. The small format is unusual for me these days. I’ve stuck with large-size paintings for a long time…