Days 2 & 3

I didn’t have too much time to work on this one yesterday morning. I had to go to Traverse City and drop off a winter landscape painting to one of the galleries, do a little grocery-shopping and go to an opening at the Dennos Museum. I have a piece in there; a self-portrait with my cats. Which you may as well see here!

No problems with the sun beating through the back of my canvas today. It was very foggy and drizzly. Great weather for holing up in a studio, figuring out shapes and colors. Very relaxing until the robo calls started up. There were 15 calls from Apple (supposedly) on my answering machine yesterday. After the third call within ten minutes today I just unplugged the phone. Don’t tell me about the Do Not Call List…..!

I’m still figuring out what to put on those plates. Hmmmm — slices of pie? Pieces of toast & jelly? Slices of cake? And then there’s the blank space on the lower right. OY! I finally realized that there’s an advantage to using a photo reference, at least for drawing things in. I’ve always drawn in things directly from life. But the problem with that is that every time I’d look, then turn away to work on the canvas, then turn back to look at the setup, I’d be seeing it from a slightly different vantage point. Which throws every relationship off, more or less. That’s how I ended up with such a large blank space on the lower right. I know I’ll figure out what to do with it eventually. Typically I’ll wake up about 3 AM with the perfect solution. Maybe the next still life I do, I’ll snap a photo of the setup, print it out in black & white, and do most of my drawing based on that. Then throw the print away & work from life the rest of the way.