Tuesday, July 5, 2011

GUITAR MAC

Well, Mac, my brother-in-law, liked my paintings so much he put 3 on his recent cd (I'll have a cd at the end of this week and will show you how it looks).  Now he wants me to paint him (but not him), a man playing the guitar but not necesarily his image, etc.  But loose, jazzy, colorful.  Hmmm...now, with that much freedom in painting what it is, you'd think it would be easy.  But it isn't. 

I tore up the first little study I did that was horrid.  Then decided if I was going to suffer through this, I'd first gesso the paper so lifting and changing things and creating texture would be easier.  And gesso made me think of designs so I put down one of Mary Beth Shaw's stencils and gessoed over that, lifting it off to get some design element behind him.  That all had to dry.

Then I started drawing on tracing paper (while the photo was upside down).  Then transferred the drawing to the watercolor paper that had the gessoed design.  Then the painting began.  And this is where I am.  I'm not sure where I'm going on what I should do from here so it's sitting and waiting for me to have some inspiration and other ideas.  I like the color and can lift out here and there and add some darks here and there.  But need to have a better roadmap before tackling this one again.





4 comments:

Autumn Leaves said...

What an honor to have your work truly loved by a family member! This will be fabulous upon completion. I like it so much already.

RH Carpenter said...

Thanks, Autumn; I'm glad you are liking it so far. With some distance, I'm liking it more, too and just need to return to it and finish some things.

Joan Sandford-Cook said...

This has lots of atmosphere and probably doesn't need much more done to it.

RH Carpenter said...

Thanks, Joan! I'm thinking the more I see it on the blog, the better I like it and don't want to fiddle with it too much more - of course, right now I don't have the time = busy weekend!