Morning Studio

I was some distance from the model today, which proved to be a good thing -- hard to obsess over details when you really do see the model as a whole.  Both of these sketches were done very quickly.

Blissful Afternoon in the Studio

I  usually paint in the morning, mostly because it's time I can carve out more easily than other times of day.  Today, an "ice" delay held up my morning, so I dropped in on a late afternoon studio session.  There weren't so many painters, people were very quiet, very relaxed.  Ok, there was one woman "painting" on an iPad, she wasn't exactly in the same space I was.  Anyway, what a blissful way to spend the time and end up with a painting that captures just what I saw and felt.

Repainting, rethinking

I picked up the streaked, bleached, stained painting from Quartermaine's and washed it (as best I could) with Gamsol.  It removed most of the lemon pulp but left behind the stains from coffee and red fruit.  I realized I have to repaint the entire painting to cover the spots and streaks left behind.  You get a certain loose feeling when there's nothing you can salvage but the idea.

I always try to build on what I knew worked from before, but I never was satisfied with.  I decided the color was the first thing that I needed to fix.   Warm up the colors in the sun, make the colors in the shade both cooler and brighter.  Loosen up the figures.

The original painting is on the left.  The new, partially repainted version, still a work in progress, is on the right.  A little of the dull/darkness of the painting on the left is the photo quality, but a lot of it is the painting.  I'm thinking this repainting is working.

 

Installation at Quartermaine's

I brought in the painting of Steve testing coffees (cupping is the official name) and we put it up today.

I took down the painting that had been there, splattered with juice, coffee and lemon pulp.  It was a mess!  I have scrubbed away at it using Gamsol to get the residue off and will start trying to repaint and restore it next.