For a few years now I’ve been using a digital picture frame viewer in the studio as a means to display reference photos while I work. Unfortunately, recently it stopped working, so I looked for a replacement. At first I thought I’d just get another cheap viewer that just shows pictures, but I wasn’t too crazy about the poor color accuracy, so I decided to look into getting a tablet. I found this one online for just under $50 new. It came today, and was easy to set up. It’s an Android tablet slightly bigger than the old viewer. at 10″. I need to find a stand for it, or may make one.
Making progress on the new painting. I’ve colored in most of the background and the statue. There will be much more refining of details here and there later, but this gives me the direction I need to see how to bring this all together. I like the contrast of the statue to the background. She pops out with good dimension. All of of this was made with Open acrylics. I’ll work more on that top corner next, and then the foreground area.
I’ve started a new painting. It’s based on some photos that I made of a courtyard at a local Catholic church that has a statue of Saint Mary. I’m planning to enter it in a local exhibit where the painting is due for delivery on the first week of April, so there’s a bit of a deadline. I think I can make it. I decided to do this one using Golden’s Open acrylics, but I started this layer using Turner’s acrylic gouache. The surface is canvas mounted to foamcore, 16 x 20″.
I have a new painting to show. It’s taken from a photo of mine where I saw this woman sitting on a bench downtown near where I live. Casein on board, 11 x 16″.
I’m considering this finished; although, there’s room for some clean up and details if I decide to add that. Right now I like the loose sketchiness of it, so I’ll leave it alone for a while. It accomplished what I set out to do, which was to test out this new clay coated surface I made. That has held up really well. No flaking, cracking, or lifting of the surface when wet. It behaved just fine, and takes paint well.
Finally got all the interrupting chores out of the way to start a new painting on the clay coated paper I created in the previous post. This is based on a drawing of a photo I took at a local doctor’s office, showing two elderly people in the waiting room. I decided to start off with a blue wash since the majority of the final local colors will be in warm tones. That color is not all that important in the end, as most of it will be covered up, so it’s mostly used to roughly help place the shapes and values. The clay coating is holding up well under this wash. We’ll see how well it does with gouache I plan to paint over it next.
Artwork by D. B. Clemons 