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!
