Wow! After a day of clearing the studio out, yesterday the contractor got busy and threw up the framing for the wall in a day, even sheet-rocking one side all the way to the roof. Today they returned and added some plywood then sheet-rock to the other side; by this evening the majority of the [...]
I’ve finished the brown layer of the skulls, which means that everything should start moving a bit faster now. I’m very pleased to see how much the painting has opened out, with the skulls streaming out off the sides of the canvas. I’m also very happy with the skeleton’s legs, which I extended so that [...]
With that patch of unworked white steadily diminishing, I’m getting so close to finishing the first layer of the skulls that it’s almost painful. In answer to Gary’s comment on the previous post (thanks for that), this has been an exercise in patience and stamina, with curiously little emotional impact from the work. You might [...]
I’m on the home stretch of the skulls now, with only the top of the left side to do, and they’re going pretty smoothly. I got into the studio early today so I could watch the world cup game between England and Slovenia, only to be tortured by terrible streaming that kept breaking up the [...]
Adding skulls to the left side has really made a big difference to the feel of the painting. Now I’m getting a very strong sense of scale, with the skulls reaching from side to side around the angel, falling away from him and around him beyond the boundaries of the canvas edges. I’m seriously considering [...]
The skulls on the right side are complete (in the first layer) so tomorrow morning I’m planning to move over to the left side and see how far I can get, then I plan to watch the world cup game between England and Algeria at lunchtime. There’s a certain amount of endurance required to continue painting this [...]
I’m working on the skulls high on the right side, gradually bringing them down to meet the foreground. Getting the balance of the contrast is going to become increasingly important, and I’m concerned to get the scale of the skulls right as they get closer, but simultaneously looking for a swell-like motion in the surface [...]
The skulls at the centre are complete, so I’ve moved to the right hand side of the painting, where I’m working my way up toward the horizon. I started putting a little shadow in the distance, leaving the most distant skulls alone in the faded white that I put on a couple of months ago; [...]
Jetlag has made me feel blurry and I’ve avoided the studio in favour of more adrenaline oriented activities so I can throw this tiredness off as soon as possible. I’ve also got to pay attention to some important administrative work for the art department at the university, so I need to divide my time carefully [...]
Arriving at home last night was wonderful! Although spending some time in Britain was profoundly rewarding, including the best visit to Stonehenge I have ever made, with a beautiful sunset so powerful that it felt as if I could hear the sun going down to the horizon, it still felt great to get back home [...]
