Painting #226 - Sept 7 - It's a blue Moon out tonight, well, just our group

I had the day off, I did get over to the studio to re-frame a couple of paintings (change the glass in one from regular glass to non-glare, and clean the glass in the other one, evidently I didn't see some streaks on the inside of the glass), so I did get a couple of other things done, I didn't get to paint my painting until I got to Blue Moon (Susan's), for our bi-monthly meeting. I decided to finish a painting that I started in my Sturgis class in August. The ceramic chicken was part of some things that one of my Marshall students gave me to photograph, I added the eggs and the cloth. I had a hard time making myself finish this painting, I think the egg basket was giving me second thoughts about doing it, once I got started, I did fine, my friends really enjoyed the chicken, they like that it's not totally defined in the face.

I did this one on Arches 140, this is 1/4 sheet, so it's much larger than the ones I've been painting lately, that may also been part of my problem making myself paint this one. I started by sketching the chicken and eggs and the table (well, it's actually my organ bench, or piano bench if you please), I started with some purple/brown mixture for the background, I wasn't sure exactly how dark I was going to go, so I didn't get it totally black, it is dark but it has a purple cast to the dark, not black. Then I laid in the buff edge of the bench, or bench pad, and then started to work on the chicken, I kept it fairly light at first, then a thin wash of a mixture of yellow ochre and burnt sienna for the eggs, I also put a wet in wet wash for the cloth (a flour sack dish cloth, if you must know), and that was all I got done on the first day that I worked on it. Today I changed the background to a much darker purple brown, and at the bottom edge. Then I worked on some darker shadows for the chicken and the shadows for the cloth under the chicken and the eggs, I really painted over the basket shape, and laid in the cloth without regard to the basket, if I had tried to paint around it, the colors wouldn't have flowed correctly, then, I painted in the basket shape with cerulean blue as a base color, I darkened the eggs to give them volume, and then worked up the basket, this basket is very opaque over the top of the eggs and the cloth, I like this painting and I hope you do too.