Precision: Step 4
Here’s a trade secret you may have never heard before:
If by Step Four your painting doesn’t look like it’s going to be a masterpiece, you should immediately paint a big red square over the top of it, complete with streams of paint dripping down the face of it, and proclaim yourself a genius to the first person you see who looks like they really need a friend.
Just kidding, of course. I’m sure no one would actually believe you if you attempted such a boldfaced… and… oh wait. What’s that? Oh really? You don’t say. Well, never mind then. My publicist has informed me that this was already done a long time ago and that the perpetrator is far more famous and successful than I can ever hope to become. Looks like I need a new publicist.
In any case, we are at the oh-so-important Step Four and things are looking fine, so no need for any sudden arrivals of giant geometric shapes in the studio. (And Linda breathes a sigh of relief) It’s a shame, though, seeing as how this would be the final step if it had come to that. And I have several more episodes of Firefly waiting for me to watch them. Sigh. Those Giant Square guys have it so easy.
You’ll have to forgive the wobbliness of my included visual aids this time. I assure you that it’s all in the camera man (*bad* pizza delivery guy!) and not in the actual painting. The last completed image is pretty close to the painting itself.
This building has a lot more complexity than the first one, but one thing I keep in mind is that the right-hand side of the building is going to be partially covered by the figure’s hair later on down the line, so I’m not going to fuss too much over that half of the building. The important thing is to get more of the yellows that were used in the first building into this one to act as a nice visual foil for the blues. Other than that, I just try to keep things straight and sensible. I am at heart an organic painter, i.e. I like things that meander and flow and do not include a lot of hard, straight lines. As you can imagine, freestanding architecture does not exactly fall into the “organic” category. At least, not the kind of architecture that I tend to find appealing. Or safe. So this kind of work does find me gritting my teeth, gripping my brushes a little too tight, and every now and then I might jump from my stool, shake the kinks out of my fingers like a wet dog, and do a lap or two around the room. But this is a lot better than working on a painting like, say, Gold Standard 2, where the work was 95% jumping jacks and lying on the floor groaning into the night, and 5% real effective work. If I painted 4 Gold Standard subjects a year, I’d be ready to compete in the Olympics, although I’m not sure there’s an official event for “stressed out oil painting rituals” yet. *Yet*, mind you. Yet.
And so the background is essentially completed. Bang! Whoosh! YAY! See you next time.
Tags: Damon Denys, Precision
