6″x6″ (15×15 cm) – oil on gessobord
First painting in 2015 – Spintop. It is also the last installment for Unwrapping exhibit that will be opening in Mostly Glass gallery this weekend. I am happy and a little scared. Wish me luck!
Many people ask me ask me how long this style of painting takes? I usually tell them – long. It takes a long time, several weeks. A couple or three months if a painting is larger. But how long is long exactly?!
I decided to time myself and find out. So I painted with a stop watch for several weeks, and now can report to you that this 6″x6″ painting took me 52 hours: 7 hours for composition, prep work and drawing, and 45 hours of painting. I started composition work on November 29 and signed the painting on January 27 – almost two months, but holidays got in the midst and there were literally a couple of weeks that I did not paint at all.
12″x9″ (30×23 cm) – oil on aluminum panel
More often than not these paper paintings take longer than I anticipate. Or hope! I think this one took two months. But I am not entirely sure, and am afraid to investigate. What if it took 3 months? Regardless, it is now complete and drying.
There are are couple of things to mention about this painting. This is my first try working on Dibond surface. Dibond is a two ply aluminum panel used for signs. It can be gessoed and used as painting subtract. I really like it and hope to use it for most of my work. It is smoother and less absorbent than Gessobord. Lovely surface!
I took the level of complexity up a notch with this painting. Crinkled music paper is great fun to paint! My gallery will be happy, I hope :). He loves complexity!
6″x6″ (15×15 cm) – oil on gessobord
I finished this little painting of cherries in a paper bag last week. This is another installment for the Unwrapped show I’ve been painting for. It came out a nice and shiny little painting, but all I had for it in terms of a title was dull and boring.
So I posted the painting on FB and opened it for crowd-sourching for the title. My friends just ROCK! In 24 hours I had a different problem – too many brilliant titles. 40 to be exact, almost impossible to choose because there were so many good and clever ones. They even created a bit of a rift here in the studio as my husband, my daughter and I had different favorites. In the end I did the deciding – it is my painting LOL!
12″x12″ (30 x 30 cm) – oil on gessobord – commission
Thorns on Paper is a second commission for Mostly Glass gallery and another painting for the Crinkled Paper show planned for this year end.
I’ve been working on this painting since April, it took nearly three months, longer than I hoped. I am happy to finish and sign it. And it did not help the matter that towards the end a scratch appeared on a finished background. Could have been Elvis’ work, or I might have gotten careless for a moment – hard to tell. I could not repair it and had to repaint the background.
About the title: Everyone who talked about this painting so far calls it “Caravaggio”, which seems to be an intuitive thing to do given the book title painted in the front. Natural that it may be I find it a bit presumptuous. I titled the painting Thorns on Paper to reflect on the painting on the book cover Crowning with Thorns.