These days I am not only spending a lot of time painting the museum floors, I'm also having to tackle the debris that we track into the house. But here's today's work on the parquet floor, and while it still needs a lot of cleaning up, I'm happy with it.
Added some color in a bunch of places today; I need to see this one take shape.
That extra paint from Standing Room turned out to be the right color for the "white" areas of this one:
Using a palette knife, I mixed up a lot of color that will serve as the wall molding. There is a huge amount of paint on the palette, though, and it's going to end up being unused. I'll see if i can put it into another piece.
And I added some blue black glazing to various places on this one:
Here's one I haven't picked up for a while. It's a snowy day, and I need bright sunlight for the 30x40s, so I'm trying to do other things until the sun returns.
Back to the easel for a short time this afternoon; many preparations needed to be made in advance of the coming snow. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get in some more bench time.
Below: a pinkish wall.
Next: More wall, but greyer this time.
And finally, a little color work on the blossoms.
...in the form of a bad, bad tooth/gum infection and a scheduled root canal. Still, I've managed to work on the floors of the two 30x40s. Not feeling quite up to painting today but maybe later.
When I started out in art school, I had to be conscious of every penny spent on textbooks and art supplies; my parents were not wealthy, and we had always been frugal. This affected my art work as I squeezed out the bare minimum of any color on my palette, and it continues to this day. Unfortunately, I end up not taking chances with color combinations, and even worse, like today, I mix less paint on my palette than I really need to cover a large space like the back wall, below.
I'll have to re-do the wall. The color's entirely too happy, it needs to be greyed down and less forthright; museum walls don't demand attention. And the paint was actually setting up (drying) as I moved from one side to the other! (I blame the lack of indoor humidity in the winter.)
Also, my original plan was to subtly introduce a soft yellow above each of the paintings, and dark corners to focus attention on the middle of the painting. So I will try again.
I was right to take out that extraneous information; the painting is much more cohesive now.
There's been something about this painting that bothers me. At first, I thought it was the boring color palette, so I started studying Sargent to broaden my idea of what the wall colors could look like. But in the last couple of days I've realized it's the fact that the open door and the two display cases just make the space confusing. I'm going to take the door out the next chance I get, and probably the display case on the left as well.
I did get to work on the wall paintings in Standing Room. It took longer than I would have thought, but I managed to get the basics of the pieces brushed in. I'll have to adjust for color next time I work on them, especially the yellows in "Woman With a Necklace" and "Girl Looking in a Mirror."
And I put down a base layer for the walls and floor in this one:
I was disappointed with the color, though. I have a very accomplished friend who does extraordinary shadows, and one time I asked her what pigment she used to achieve such naturalism. She seemed a bit perplexed at the question, and said, "It's just Raw Umber." So I've used it in a few things since and it's always worked pretty well. But here it looks odd.
I'll see what it looks like tomorrow; perhaps it just needs a little blue mixed in. In any case, I now have 5 museum paintings in the works.
Instead of feeling unmoored and lost like I was a couple of months ago, I now feel excited and confident about the museum series. And I am much more sure of color choices. It's a good feeling.
Today I wanted to brush in a few of those paintings on the museum walls. Tomorrow I'll do one or two in the Standing Room painting as well.
Messages, work in progress (click on image for larger view)
And I splashed some gaudy colors on the two little aluminum panels.
Sunrise or Sunset, work in progress (click on image for larger view)
Cindy's Sunset, work in progress (click on image for larger view)
