PROGRESSION FOUR

Progression Four: MEXICAN MURAL PAINTING?

I really like the way this painting I did in May 2004 turned out.
It is representational of the stages I go through when exploring
Subject matter I�m not particularly good at. When I stood back and looked at it It reminded me of the paintings you might see in Murals in Mexico. I even painted it around Cinco D� Mayo!

This painting took me a long time to paint though. It was done in about 5 sittings..

While this painting is surely representational, the bold brushstrokes are missing and have been replaced by smooth blending of very wet cream consistency oil paint. I still have some problems with anatomy, especially in the hands but the feet in this one anyway worked. The face is very stylized. In fact I could just stop here and not progress any further in developing my skills.
But the goal is to make it real!

I love the way the shirt and the hair worked in this. I laid down the entire figure in burnt sienna, and when I painted on the hair using a stiff bristled brush loaded with a dark mix of burnt sienna and pathalo blue. Some of the rusty color showed through like real life highlights. You cannot tell in this photo but quite often I allow that rusty red to show in spots to highlight areas, especially if there is dark on dark in an area of the painting.

I had to laugh when I looked at this photograph. You can see my feet at the bottem.

I am actually painting on a card table here. I bought this table at an indoor flea market in 1994 and used it when I rented a space to teach art. It worked great teaching art at that place because It was far enough in the country for adult oil painting classes and it was a placee to show my work and teach children while their parents walked around and looked at all the really neat antiques and crafts. There was even a book seller who sold used books. We ended up doing quite a few trades as she was always looking for art books and resource materials for me.