I painted crows onto many of the panels, but found that I quickly noticed repetition, so I need to prepare a new photoshop file of images to project onto the panels. Projection is an old painter’s trick for creating murals and large works – saves a ton of time laying out the work. It doesn’t help at all with the quality of painting, in fact I’d say it detracts a little, because using the projector tends to take out the idiosyncratic lengthening and shortening that define an artist’s style. However, for a large scale project like this, where the birds are simple black silhouettes against the gold, it’s a perfect tool.Â
There’s still a long way to go. I will need to gild a pile of panels and paint thirty more birds before I have a huge flock for that big gallery wall. Now I’ve taken on the ten panels of the other project too, I’ll be even more glad to have help from my students. I’m also concerned that I need to have enough work for Vegas and the CLU show, so I really need to get to work.
