Boston Skyline Painting

DONE!!!

Boston Skyline Painting

Boston Skyline Painting

The sun came out...

Boston Skyline Painting

Color, tightening and correcting details, reviewing and enhancing compositional lines, applying paint with texture and richness - these are what are on my mind now as I move through the pictorial space... 

Boston Skyline Painting

It is starting to come alive...

Boston Skyline Painting

Today's progress!

Frames

I am starting to put together my nineteen illustrations into what I hope could be an exhibit somewhere, sometime. I found these versatile unfinished frames at Michael's. The frame can accommodate my 16" x 20" canvas (thick) and masonite (thin) pieces. I oiled the frames with Watco and when they are dry I will varnish them.

Boston Skyline Painting

Boston Skyline Painting

Today I assembled the 50" square stretcher strips (I bought them at the excellent art supply store in Pittsfield Miller Supply Company, Inc.  see also Fredrix Heavy Duty) and stretched the canvas. The DU table out of the garage, I spread out a clean tarp on the floor, and worked my way around the piece, using the staple gun, regularly checking for square and pulling with all my might to keep ripples away. I malleted in the stretcher keys and carried the canvas to my easel in the greenhouse. It barely fit! I had to remove the upper brace and rotate it. The top of the canvas leans against the gripper ledge, just barely. I will have to figure out a way to secure it - I will probably use wire and a couple of tacks.

I found some more images on the web, especially interested in finding a better view of 111 Huntington Avenue.
I printed out my reference images and gridded out the primary design to block out on the canvas.
I am now mentally processing all the elements of the composition and feeling my way into an approach. I plan to put paint to canvas today!

Delta Ypsilon

The DU table top I helped my son with is done. There are some up-close irregularities, but three layers of polyurethane and a little distance render them insignificant.

Delta Ypsilon

I have been guiding and assisting my son Tim through the process of re-doing the surface of a coffee table he plans to bring to his fraternity DU.

Boston Skyline Painting

I am about to embark on painting a 50-inch by 50-inch wrapped canvas in oils of the Boston Skyline for my son's new apartment in the Back Bay. There is a large blank wall he wants to fill to brighten up the living room above the fireplace. He found some photos online, emailed them to me, and I worked in Adobe Photoshop to combine and revise, until I reached a version that he and his girlfriend, who shares the apartment, agreed on.  
We had back and forth conversations via email, such as below where I wrote in response to his expression of joy at the design and curiosity about how I was able to do the mock-up: 

I really like the modern effect - it will be a challenge for me to use a different technique. I can make the clouds more wispy, sure.

I used Photoshop Elements - I have it on the old computer in Jean's room. I basically resized all the photos to scale correctly, cloned parts of the three together, then put the whole new composite on a new transparent background layer, cropped it and filled in the top and bottom, cloning sky and water and adding clouds. Then I isolated the foreground and upped the saturation and added a texture, isolated the middle-ground and did the same - different texture, and finally did the same to the background. I used gradually less texture foreground to background to create depth.

I will go back to the "drawing board" and take your ideas into consideration.

The latest is to put a sailboat in the foreground. I will gladly do this and perhaps put a couple in the boat. Perhaps it will be a Tech Dinghy. My husband and I used to sail Tech Dinghies on the Charles when we were younger and just starting out as a couple. Above are images I found on Google Images.

Outfit Done!

see Archives "Readin' n Beadin" from Jund 22nd and 28th

Daisies Done

This is for sale: see my website www.artrebecca.com

Daisies

Knowing what you are seeing and SEEING what you are seeing...

I have gotten back to painting and I am currently working on a painting of daisies, inspired by a bouquet I picked, arranged in a Czech glass vase given to me by my in-laws - now deceased. I like the expressive lines of the stems, the variety of forms, the ambiguity of the green glass ribbon/daisy stems, the way the round brown/amber orb of the vase is echoed in the daisy centers (I discovered a new appreciation of the daisy centers), and I especially liked the lighting effects. I also saw the painting as a color challenge, to make sense of the infinite variety in the whites.

Here is my initial underpainting sketch in burnt sienna.

Here is the work after a color session.

Here I have given the background an amber glaze I mixed using cadmium orange among others paints - I did not have a tube of amber!

Here I have further refined color and form, line and balance.
I think I am almost done!