"Take Your Choice", day 6

What with my full-time work schedule, a trip to Chicago, and a couple of Fridays that fell on non-copying days (Veterans Day and the day after Thangsgiving), I haven't been able to make it back to the National Gallery in over two months. I was thinking today might be my last day on this copy, but I didn't get very far, so I'll have to continue it a little longer.

It was a brisk walk from the train station to the National Gallery in the cold morning of a beautiful day in DC

I worked from 10:30 to 12:30, putting in some important details, such as the letters on the paper on the front of the box, and adjusting the values and colors around the painting. I also put in the details on the cover of the orange book.

After lunch, I decided I was tired and just cleaned up. I will continue putting in details next Friday. I am not interested in making an exact copy, and once it gets to be burdensome, I want to stop. I'm pretty satisfied with it as is. People often tell me "I like yours better!" because mine is brighter and more modern looking (also because people are nice!) That's because I'm not really "making a copy", I'm "copying". I enjoy the process of copying in the same way as I enjoy the process of painting landscapes and still lifes from life. I'm not making an exact duplicate, but just doing the best I can, based on my own personal and limited perception of what I am looking at, and my ability to translate that perception into a painted image.

Here's a picture I took just before leaving the National Gallery - peeking out a window toward the East Wing. Every little detail of these buildings is so striking and beautiful.

One more photo of the Capitol on my way to the train - still a bright, sunny, breezy, cold day. There's nothing to compare to the National Mall with all of its FREE museums! I am so lucky to have a great reason to come down here every couple of weeks!

"Take Your Choice" day 5

I didn't get too much painting done this visit, because I had to go see the newly opened East Wing of the National Gallery. More on that later in the post.

Walking to the Gallery in the morning, I had to take this picture of the Calder stabile outside the 7th street entrance. It just seemed to be striding along...

I worked mainly on the bottom half today, trying to get the color and value of the box right, and working on the white paper with the gray picture of a town. I'm just going to post these two photos I took of my copy at the end of the day, because I really didn't do much to it after lunch. This was because after my lunch break, I went straight over to the East Wing to check it out... here are just a few highlights:

The entrance to the Modern Art galleries

The new Calder gallery

The rooftop gallery, with the blue chicken and other cool things

The Rothko room

A view down one of the Tower staircases

I took many pictures, but most not good enough to post online. I wandered through the East Wing, up and down the staircases, and more than once found myself coming out into the main area completely disoriented as to where I was in the building. They have added over 12,500 square feet of gallery space with this renovation, which took around 3 years to complete. They have incorporated a vast amount of art from their acquisition of the Corcoran's collection, and have rearranged part of the American Art collection in the West building and moved some of that art over to the East building. The way the art was curated and hung was quite striking. I saw a Cézanne still life hung next to a Picasso next to another Cubist, each having been influenced by the one before. Whole large rooms dedicated to different movements of the 20th century. Juxtapositions and contrasts. I could spend a couple of hours a day over there.

Any of my friends who come visit, I will take you there!!! Schedule your visit now!

"Take Your Choice" day 4

Our hot weather finally broke, and this morning was actually chilly. Today I worked on the top half of the painting. I repainted the wall, still just the basic color, not getting into little details yet. I started seeing mistakes I had made in the drawing - some books leaning too far, others not enough. But I'm going to try not to make myself crazy over this. It's more important to me to get the values and colors right. Still, I'm correcting what I can as I go.

I painted for two hours, then went to lunch. Here is how it looked at the end of the morning:

click on the images for a larger view

After lunch, I went to the National Gallery's library. I wasn't even aware they had a library! (And how many years have I been going there? Ahem.) Anyway, I wanted to look at a book that they had, so I went over there (in the East Building), set up my account, and requested the book. It was called "A Year in Yorkshire", and was a catalog from a David Hockney show. The book had to be read in their Reading Room, so I flipped through it quickly, and took pictures of the paintings with my phone. (I knew this was OK, since they had already told me I could make copies on their copier.) This same book was donated to the Friends of the library I work at the other day, and I tried to buy it from the Friends. But they checked online and found out that it isn't available on Amazon, and is going for $100 and up at an online rare used book seller. They're going to try and sell it online and get a lot more money for it than they could at their used book sale, where hardbacks go for $2! Oh well. It's a gorgeous bunch of paintings, and since I couldn't have it, I decided to go out painting this weekend on Skyline Drive, inspired by David Hockney.

After perusing the book, I went back up and worked on my copy a little more. Here it is at the end of the day:

I stopped early, because I wanted to go outside and draw. It's rare that the weather is so pleasant when I am downtown, and I wanted to take advantage of it. I went in search of a nice tree to draw. On the way, I walked through the Sculpture Garden and photographed this cool four-sided pyramid by Sol Lewitt. Then I went out on the Mall and drew a tree.

The building in the background is part of the Smithsonian, I think Arts and Industries. I haven't been inside it in years, but I remember seeing machines from the Industrial Revolution in there. I spent a very pleasant hour or so sketching this scene, with people walking and jogging by. 

"Take Your Choice", day 3

Today was day 3 for this copy. I got there right at 10, got my permit renewed (which has to be done once a month), and was up in the gallery by 10:15. It was a sunny day, which made the room brighter - the rooms are lit mainly by skylights, so on cloudy days, it's pretty dark for painting. But today was nice and bright.

As always, I started working by mixing up some of the basic colors I would be using. A nice orangey-beige for the wooden box, a neutral black from which I could make cool grays, and a warm dark. I started working from the bottom up, repainting large areas and getting the colors and values as close as I could. 

I took these three photos just before going to lunch:

A view of my copy with the original on the wall

 Still just working on getting the basic shapes, colors, and values right. All the surface detail will come later.

 Detail

Here is the painting at the end of the day. I mainly worked on the bottom third of the painting, but put some warm and cool darks around the books in the box. I stopped working early, because today was beautiful, and I wanted some time outside to enjoy it. This summer was too hot! So I quit working around 2:30 and got home in time to take a walk. See you in two weeks!

click on the images for a larger view

"Take Your Choice", day 2

Whew! Had a good day at the NGA today... I got there right at 10 and was painting by 10:20. I worked for three hours straight, with no breaks, and the time flew by. I repainted everything, and forced myself to cover all the white canvas. This was how it looked when I stopped for lunch:

After a nice lunch break, I bought a wonderful book of David Hockney portraits in the NGA bookstore and went back upstairs. I took a detour through a gallery that has ALL NEW PAINTINGS from the Corcoran! The National Gallery recently acquired the Corcoran and is exhibiting some of their collection. It's very exciting! I took pictures of a few that I'd like to copy at a later date, if I dare. (They look very challenging!) I might ask for this one next:

And then maybe this one:

Oh my goodness, isn't it just gorgeous? I'm going to try it, if it's available...

Anyway, after drooling over all the new acquisitions, I went back to my painting. I found that I didn't have much steam left, so I just futzed around for a little while and then cleaned up early. I think I managed to repaint almost the whole painting. I forgot to photograph it while it was on the easel, so I took a picture of it down in the Copyists' locker room:

Then I decided to take a couple of pictures of the Copyists' room itself, in case you were wondering what it looks like:

That yellow cabinet is for keeping our solvents in. They provide white tape and a marker so we can label then with our name.

This is one of the painting racks where our paintings have to stay until they're completed. Although everyone is curious to see what other copyists are working on, we are strictly forbidden to touch anyone else's painting! Those are the lockers in the background, where we can keep our paints, so we don't have to schlep everything back and forth. The only thing I take home and back are my brushes, and I leave a whole paintbox of many colors there in the locker. I also keep a little wheeled luggage cart in the corner behind the painting racks. The National Gallery is so kind to provide all this for the Copyists, free of charge! It's a wonderful program!

New Copy: John Frederick Peto, "Take Your Choice"

Today I started a new copy, John Frederick Peto's "Take Your Choice" I think this painting is a brand-new acquisition for the National Gallery, and isn't with the other works by Peto on their web site yet. Rather than my writing about it, you can go to this link to read about him and this painting.

This is the painting:

I chose this painting because I work in a library! And because of its bright colors and interesting composition.

The painting is in the corner, so it was a little challenging setting up my easel so I wouldn't block the painting on the wall to the right. I also wanted to stand directly in front of the painting, so I have the easel to my left, opposite the way I normally paint. I have to look over my right arm in order to see the painting, which is not optimal. Normally I try to have the easel to my right, since I'm right-handed, and it involves the least amount of twisting and contortion. You want to be as neutral in your posture as possible, because painting is hard enough without the added problem of physical discomfort. In this case, though, a little bit of contortion is necessary. I can deal.

Here is my view of the painting from behind the easel. If you click on the image to enlarge it, you might notice the pencil grid lines I drew on the canvas. I divided the canvas into halves and quarters. I also printed out the original painting from my computer and folded the picture into halves and quarters also. This way, I could compare my drawing on the canvas to the printout and see if the elements of my painting fell on the grid the same way the folds did on the paper.

Here I am holding the folded printout in front of my copy (folding the color print left neat white lines in the toner). I am standing several feet away from the easel, so the paper I'm holding, which is only about 8"x10", appears to be the same size as the canvas, which is 18"x27" - the same proportions as the original, which is roughly 20"x30" (The National Gallery has a rule that your copy cannot be less than 2" smaller or larger than the size of the original.)

This still life is so cluttered and confusing, I found myself relying heavily on the "cheat sheet" folded paper to draw it on the canvas. I was reminded of the "Skill-o-gram" puzzles that I loved to do as a kid (which you can still find in Dell Official Variety Puzzles magazine!) But I was getting bogged down in the grid, so I eventually abandoned it in favor of good old-fashioned measuring and holding my brush handle up to see angles and alignments.

 Here's the painting when I stopped for lunch.

After lunch, I started laying in some color, but I didn't cover all the white yet. I considered doing a "grisaille", a black-and-white underpainting which I would then paint over with coats of transparent color glazes. But I didn't really consider that for very long. I don't know how Peto approached this, but I am a direct painter. I like to mix my colors to match what I'm looking at as closely as possible. So I ended up doing a halfway job, laying in approximate values and colors, but ultimately not getting into the rich colors yet.

Here's a final shot with the painting in the background. When I'm next here 2 weeks from now, I hope to start to get into all the juicy color!

Paul Cézanne, "House of Père Lacroix", finished

Today was day 3 on this painting, and I decided to bring it to a close. I guess I could have come back next week and worked on it some more, but I felt that I had gotten what I could out of it. I was aware that I was rushing. Cézanne's brush strokes are all clear and definite, and mine look mushy. Oh well.

click the picture for a larger view

Here's a photo a visitor took of me today (and she asked permission first!) I asked her to email it to me, and she did. This proves that I was there!

A couple of cute/funny things happened today - a class of kids from a Montessori school stopped and asked me some questions. About 45 minutes later, they passed through again, and one of the girls said to me, "It's really coming together!" I was pretty impressed with this comment, and told her so.

And at the very end of the day, as I was cleaning up, quite a crowd gathered around me. I had their full attention as I wiped the paint from my pallet and poured Turpenoid into a cup to swish my brushes in before putting them away. As I was wiping a brush, I looked up to see at least three people filming me with their cell phones! I said, "I had no idea that cleaning brushes was so fascinating!" I think museum visitors get kind of silly at the end of the day!

So, I finished this copy in three days. I've put in my requests for my next copy - we have to list three paintings, in case the one we want is not available. My copying day is going to change from Thursday to every other Friday, because I am going from part-time to full-time in my job at the library (switching libraries, too, to one very close to home!) The National Gallery is very nice to let me come every other Friday, which will be my only weekday off (there is no copying on the weekend.) If I can, I'll start my next copy (whatever it is) next Thursday. Then I won't be back until Friday, July 29.

Paul Cézanne, "House of Père Lacroix"

Wow! I just got back to copying, after a year away! The Registrar got promoted, and there was nobody in the position, so nobody could start a new copy. I had turned in my permit for the Mary Cassatt I was working on last summer, and was intending on coming back in the fall, but I couldn't. They finally hired a new Registrar, and last week was the earliest I was able to get back in. I decided not to continue with the Mary Cassatt (I wasn't happy with my canvas - I had used too light stretcher bars and it was warping), but chose this nice little Cézanne instead. Last Thursday was my first day on it, but I Forgot To Post! So today I'll post pictures from last week as well.

This is Cézanne's lovely painting, on the wall in the National Gallery

Here is my easel and copy when I took a break for lunch on the first day. I neglected to take a picture of the canvas that I brought in to the museum - instead of starting on a blank, white canvas as I used to do, and measuring and drawing directly from looking at the painting, I "cheated" by printing out a picture of the painting from the NGA's web site and dividing it into halves and quarters. Then I drew the same grid onto the blank canvas and sketched in the basic placement of the elements of the painting. This saves a lot of time, so I was able to cover the whole canvas with paint by lunchtime on the first day.

This is how the copy looked at the end of the first day. Just trying to establish values and get the colors close.

And this is me posing for a visitor, who offered to take this picture with my phone!

 I guess I forgot to take a picture before lunch, but this is how it looked at the end of the second day. I want to try to use more paint and build up my brush strokes like he did. My paint is thin and dry compared to his. I need to get more exuberant! I have refrained from putting in the foliage that is covering the right side of the house, because it looks to me like Cézanne painted wet-over-dry in that area. I put some details in too early, and will probably paint over them next time, which should be two weeks from today.

Click on the pictures for a larger view.