The day was broken into several short sections, which made getting a clear shot at painting for any great length of time tricky, but was perfect for getting gesso onto panels in preparation for the “As the Crow Flies” magnum opus.
The birch panels are well seasoned now, having laid out for a long time, but I discarded a couple which had split, leaving me only the stable pieces for preparation. I painted gesso for hours, punctuated by lunch, the arrival of twenty new easels for our painting classes, Art and Doug arriving to record audio for the slideshow thing for the web and my children’s repeated arrivals and departures. By the way, the slideshow should end up resembling the one they made about Cyn McCurry’s work, which can be seen here. There are some good pictures of her paintings at the bottom of that page too.
There are about 160 square feet of birch plywood here, each with at least five coats of gesso on them. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much prepared wood in the studio at one time. I’m looking forward to getting the red and gold on them. Painting the black crows will be relatively easy, but perhaps repetitive. The main piece is essentially complete, with the exception of the seated figure, which needs a couple more layers and some careful observation to pull it off properly.Â
I don’t have the mordant yet, so I’ll have to wait to get these panels much further along. Back to the Bombers piece tomorrow!
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