Start of Something Big! The Washington Monument

This is an exhilarating experience! I've painted a large mural outdoors before, but it's been a while since I've dealt with a big, wide brush and huge gobs of paint. My 7 ft tall Washington Monument is coming along.

I'm working from a sketch I did which had -- wrong! -- the stone of the monument whiter at the top. It's not -- the "white" marble is two colors and the top is definitely a yellower stone. I'm going to play with the color a bit as this painting progresses.

The limitations of my set up: I am up on a step stool to paint the upper part and I've gotten just a bit of paint on the ceiling since the canvas is wedged up against it. I have to get onto the floor to paint the bottom. I've been thinking I could separate the canvases so I could work on them all at normal height, but I need to see the work as a whole, so I will suffer for art.

7 ft Ceiling

Next time I decide to assemble a 7ft tall triptych, I will think first about the height of the ceiling in my studio. The sketch of the Washington Monument alongside the canvas is what I'll be working from to make this painting.

Looser, Softer

We've got this model again for 3 more sessions. I'm going to keep working on making new paintings, looser, softer each time.

Model with Parasol, Update

I spent some time today working on improving the likeness in the face to our model. I had taken out all the umbrella spokes, only to find I needed to add them back in again for the painting to work. The parasol is smaller and I think this is worked up enough.

After calling it quits on the portrait, I did a small sketch of the pose.

A Monumental Project

I have a show in September at the Foundry Gallery and I've decided to paint large canvases. It seemed to make some sense to paint monuments in monumental sizes. I'm planning on a 7 ft tall Washington Monument, a 6 ft wide Jefferson Memorial, that kind of thing.

I started sketching today. I'm having a grand time on the small versions and wondering how successful I'll be making them into large scale paintings. I did a tiny 3 x 5 painting of the Lincoln Memorial, using a penny as my reference and some shiny copper paint. A magnifying glass would have been helpful, I'm not sure that I'll try to turn that one into a full-size work. The 8 x 12 Washington Monument, though, which I painted from a vision in my head, just might work. I have to get out when the sun's shining, I hope in early morning, to get down some more sketches of possible subjects for these paintings.

Model with Parasol

Painting of a Backache

Our model in the studio today was asked if he wanted to take a break mid-morning. His answer was, "no, I'm fine, but does anyone have any Advil?"

Cake Baking

I don't paint in "series" and I don't cook every day (although there are those who would like me to!). Today I had to bake a cake and while the ingredients had to come to room temperature, I figured I might as well paint them. I am using a cookbook stand as an easel!

I think they came to room temperature quite some time ago! I kind of lost myself in making this loose painting of little touches of color, no drawn shapes. Time to bake the cake. I'll have to work on a little refinement --not too much -- later on.

Fresh Pasta Painting

Here's the final outcome. I played around with warming and cooling the foreground and background, simplifying shapes and then adding in more complexity... the result is that the paint is thick and highly textured.

Breaking Painter's Block

For the past few weeks I have been fighting "painter's block" and lacking the spark I needed to get a painting started. Finally combining tonight's dinner -- fresh pasta -- with a painting set up seemed to do the trick today. I was getting out the ingredients when the gleam of the metal bowl, warm color of the brown eggs and pyrex greenish glass looked like a painting to me.