I stretched this canvas over a year ago before realizing that— at 40″x40″— there was no way it would fit on my easel. Since then I’ve been trying to hide it behind the bike rack in the studio and hoping it would magically disappear or that something would occur to me to paint on it. When I took this picture of the Queensboro bridge last fall I knew I’d finally found the right image. But it’s taken me a while to build up the courage to start.
I’ve played around with a bunch of different ways of starting paintings: a line drawing in thin paint, a true black-and-white value sketch, or just starting in on whatever part was most interesting to me. But I think what I like best is to start with a kind of an earth-tone sketch like this. Just a little bit of color helps me see what’s close and far more quickly. I remember one of my painting teachers telling us that “color is space” and thinking that she was just being a fruity oil painting teacher. But now I think I’m starting to get what she meant.
I’m pretty pleased with how the underpainting went. I think this has a nice looseness that comes from the fact that my brushes were pretty large and also that the computer with the source image was sitting behind me. So I couldn’t look at the source and the painting at the same time.
Of course I am still intimidated by this painting and although I started it 2 weeks ago I’ve been too nervous to work on it more. I’m hoping this weekend I’ll be less of a chicken.
Post a Comment