6th day at Lillian Smith Center

And the work goes on!  I collected several leaves as I walked this morning and decided to use them in enlarged versions on a new canvas.  Here are the leaves.  Five of them.

 
If anyone has been counting the number of leaves I'm including on each canvas you might have noticed on one canvas there is 1 leaf; and there are 3 on another; and now there are 5.  Yesterday there were 13 leaves I drew and painted, and a couple of days ago there were 8.   Maybe 2 tomorrow? Yes, I use Fibonacci numbers very frequently when deciding how many things to include in my images.  Not a "magic" solution to the designing, I know, but it gives me a starting place.

Today, I began with a new "blank" canvas and first thing I did was to measure off a 2" margin and made a freehand line drawn with charcoal to help me place the objects.  I tend to run very close to the edge when I draw so having a boundary marker is helpful for me.

The image area for this is 58" h x 39" w inside the margin.  The five leaves were pinned up nearby so I could refer to them as I worked.  I still haven't taken down two of the leaves from an earlier painting... those are still pinned above the canvas.

I began by drawing with a thick charcoal after measuring and placing the horizontal points for each leaf to be about 9" apart.  I work with some method even though it appears that I'm pretty haphazard with my painting.  I like to have a sense of the structure that's going to be the framework for the design. In the photo above you might notice blue masking tape at top and sides--those are marking the center of the area at vertical and horizontal points...more reference guides.

And then I begin... loosely doing line drawing with charcoal...

and after painting over the whole thing with white and matt medium, I drew again, refining a bit.

 I painted over it all yet again with the white and matt medium.

Next, I used paper towels and a stiff brush to wipe away some of the paint, drawing in a negative way.

 Bit by bit, layer by layer, I got to this point before I left the studio today.  I'll work a bit on it tomorrow.  It's coming along.

 Here are both of the pieces that were on the wall to work on today.  I added shadow to the one on the left--I put it back up this morning to look at, think about and maybe change somewhat.

This photo is closer to what the painting looks like.  The green and red-orange are so close to the same value that the photos don't really record what I can see in life.

Here at the cabin in the evening I'm working on drawing... yes, from leaves and other things I'm finding in the yard and on my walks.  I have these things to draw tonight: