May 20, 2013

It's coming along! Day 3, Cézanne's "The Peppermint Bottle"

I made it down there today by noon (I know, a late start again!), but I ate lunch before I started painting, thinking that I would paint for four hours straight. I made it until three, but then I totally ran out of steam. But I got quite a bit accomplished, I think.


(click on the images for a larger view)

The cutest thing that happened today was a class of teenage girls who all sat cross-legged on the floor behind me and quietly watched me paint for about 15 minutes. I told them they were such polite museum-goers!

Next Monday is Memorial Day, so it will be two weeks before I can work on this again. I'm thinking one more day ought to do it, two at the most. I'm already scouting around the museum for my next copy!

May 13, 2013

Day 2 - Cézanne's "The Peppermint Bottle"

I didn't come last week, and I got there late today, because I had errands to run this morning. I got started on this at around noon, and painted without stopping until 2:30. Then I just had to take a break. Here's how it looked at that point:


I came back from my break and painted another 45 minutes until 4:00, which is the mandatory stopping time. I could have kept going, and ended up wasting a lot of good paint which I had spent a long time mixing, but c'est la vie. I must say, I'm really enjoying this copy. I'm in a room with nothing but Cézannes, and I really enjoy listening to the tour guides and visitors talking about him. I'm having a lot of fun applying the paint in his little diagonal dabby marks. I'm finding it not too hard to match his color palette, using only my own limited palette of cadmium yellow, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, and white. Here is how it looked at the end of the day:


(click on the images for a larger view)
I can't wait to come back next week and continue working on it.