Back to the Card Game - updated

Here's the latest update 

I've returned to the old image of my grandmother and friends playing cards.  The earlier sketch I'd done has attracted a lot of comment and interest, especially when people look at the woman on the left.

As with all of these  old images, I'm finding that as I sketch them, they go from being intriguing at this stage (a a lot of white, unresolved space) to a stage that I find less satisfying.

detail from the earlier sketch

I think, in part, it's a function of photos (whether old or not) that lack my eye in defining a focal point.  Of course the other part of that is that I need to adhere less to the strict depiction of the image and more to my vision of what I want to see in the work.  I find the initial sketch brings out large shapes, relationships between objects (or people) and allows me to tell a story.

I'm going to keep playing with painting these old slides and see how I can find the interpretation that works for me.  And for now, I'm going to leave this "unfinished" and think about whether or what comes next.

San Francisco Ferry Building

I did a little 8 x 8 painting of the San Francisco Ferry Building today in the studio.  I had the great pleasure of going there earlier this week while visiting a friend in California!

Edgemoor Lane Fall -- in progress/updated!

This is after the 2nd day of work on the painting

first day's work

Walking down this sidewalk toward my studio has been a real joy as the leaves have been turning.   I realized today that since I've been thinking about this landscape so much -- how the light hits the maple leaves, how the Japanese maple and holly hedge on the right cast shadows -- that it was time to paint it.

I need to knock back the intensity of the shaded plants on the right -- they jump forward of the maple a fair bit, when they should sit more quietly in deep shade.

Right now there's large blocks of color everywhere, and I had thought before painting that I'd need to break up the leaves on the ground a bit more.  I may study that on my walk to the studio tomorrow and see where it leads me.

Birthday Party 1962-3?

I'm still not sure where this project is going, but I'm continuing to explore painting from the slides of my family from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

A lot of the slides are cut off in strange ways -- faces cut in half, feet missing and the like -- that is making me wonder if I should fill in some of the details (in this one, I used feet from another slide to rough in the black mary-jane shoes on my sister) or if the strange cropping should be part of the look back into the past?

I love the homemade paper hats we are wearing in this image.  The framed print on the wall is Picasso's The Lovers, which hung in our house when I was growing up, so I guess my grandparents were visiting for our house in upstate NY for a birthday for one of my sisters or me.