Painting, Reading, and Projecting - A Slow Day in My Art Studio

My Current Motif

Hi-

It’s a rather slow Monday in the studio, so I thought this would be a good day for one of my TTO blogs. TTO stands for This, That, and the Other. I assume no further explanation is necessary…

I am working on my next acrylic. It’s going rather slowly. I’m having trouble getting into the real mood of the painting. I don’t know why. It’s a perfectly good outdoor-sy landscape of a road, a big tree as the focal point, and a windmill as a counterpoint. I do like the sun and shadows in it, so we shall see (how it goes).

I finished the Great Book of French Impressionism over the weekend. I have been reading it off and on for the last three weeks. Looking at it would actually better describe what I was doing rather than reading it, because it is mostly pages and pages of famous paintings by Manet, Monet, Bazille, Van Gogh, and Cezanne just to name a few.

I am starting my next book, Hopper’s Places. I have seen many of these paintings in other books and even a few of them in person. The focus of this book is on the locations Edward Hopper painted in his cityscapes and on Cape Cod.

Let’s see, what else?

Last week I purchased a projector that enlarges and projects an image onto your support so that you can easily sketch in the main elements. Since I like to paint structures and buildings, maybe this will help in getting the perspective right the first time I draw it. It doesn’t project a very bright image even in a darkened room during the day, so I may have to use the thing at night. It works better on bright, colorful images. If you use one of these, please let me know what your experience has been.

As I said, a rather slow Monday in the studio, but it is now time for me to get back to my acrylic and see what I can make of it.

Until next blog…