Sometimes it looks like my gypsy caravan.
(almost) live blogging the Big Painting
Junior studio assistant gives me a meaningful look while senior studio assistant (mostly unseen) smacks junior assistant with her tail. (This happens a lot.)
The blue compotier is starting to go in.
The flowers also are starting to go in. I use music stands to hold my studies. It’s very convenient — and musical! — I feel like I’m playing the score while I paint.
All these study drawings and paintings are very useful. I’ll be making more of them as the painting goes forward. As more of the picture gets painted I’ll know what further information I need from the objects.
Any excuse to draw the frog teapot will do ….
the painting and its antecedents
There’s always some archaeology going on in the studio. Recently when I removed the yellow cloths to reveal the blue cloth with flowers (because the blue cloth had been behind the yellow one) it reexposed it to the painting that it inspired.
So it happens that for the time being, the little painting “Love, Desire, Striving” hangs directly above the background that it portrays. And I only just noticed yesterday.
Ah, ever the alert artist ….
you cannot paint all the time
When I’m not painting, I’m doing this. Don’t worry it’s not as bad as it looks. Several Austen novels are piled into one book. I’m only reading Pride and Prejudice for now. Thus I’ve made rather better progress than it would seem from the photo.
Austen fits nicely into my world. I think she’d approve of the way the studio looks at present.
confluence
When you have lots of painted flowers stacked about and real ones in vases sitting nearby as well, sometimes the real and the artificial get all jumbled together. In the view above the real flowers blend right into the receding painted ones.
getting good help these days
My studio assistant doesn’t look too happy. He thought the job would pay more in dog biscuits than has proved to be the case.
In the background stands the work in progress. I’ve taped a few more drawings to the canvas to gain a better sense of where some of the still life objects might go.
bringing lemons
If life brings you lemons, of course you paint them. And if life would bring you lemons, you wouldn’t have to go to the grocery store to buy them. Maybe it’d mean you have a lemon tree. Or perhaps you have people who just bring you lemons — that’s what I need — I need staff.
On my still life table, the lemons repose in a blue compotier. So it’s kind of like heaven here.
adjacent things
I love the intersections in my studio. The corner of a still life painting abuts the flower power fabric background of the still life table, and both adjoin the little drawing of a lotus that hangs on the side of the book cabinet just because.
There are all these natural abstractions lying about. Like the parts of the unfinished paintings that wait in the queue.
apprendre le français
The other book on the still life table is the French dictionary. Because Monsieur Bonnard (mon professeur de peinture) said if I want to talk to him, I had better learn to speak his language.
He’s very strict. (You’d never guess it from the paintings.)
here’s looking at you, kid
One thing I note about painting flowers, they don’t watch you — or even seem to. But when you draw faces — faces that look in your direction — well, it’s like having company.
But I like drawing faces and I think I shall do more of it.
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