Day 3, copy after George Caleb Bingham, "Cottage Scenery"

I almost didn't go to the National Gallery today. I'm retired, so my mornings are normally relaxed. I wake up when I'm ready to wake up. On National Gallery days, however, I have to get up early if I want to catch the last commuter train or bus. Either that, or drive to the Metro, which runs all day, but the whole trip takes much longer. So I usually force myself to get up early one day of the week. Last night, however, I couldn't fall asleep, probably because I knew I had to get up early. My alarm was set for 6 am. Still awake at 12:30, I decided to unset my alarm and not go in. Disappointing, but I didn't want to be exhausted all day.

I woke up at 8:30, having had almost 6 hours, and decided it was enough - I would drive to the Metro station and go in late. I got to the NGA a little after 11 and painted from 11:30-1 before I had to break for lunch. (I was thinking I'd just work through lunch, but being sleep-deprived also makes you hungry, so I obeyed my hunger.)

During this 1 1/2 hours of painting, I repainted the sky - the cloudy part. My clouds were too violet, and his has more yellow. I mixed a color that seemed better and repainted those clouds. I also darkened the trees to the left of the house, and worked on the roof. 

These photos are how it looked at 1:00 when I went to lunch, thinking I would work more after I ate. But when I got back to my easel after lunch, I decided I just didn't have it in me to paint any more today. 

One museum visitor told me he thought my clouds were too gray. The original's clouds definitely look pinker in the photo. The art on the walls have spotlights on them, and my painting is lit by the skylight in the ceiling of the gallery, so they look different when photographed by the iPhone. I'll see what I think next week when I can look at it with fresher eyes.

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Day 2, "Cottage Scenery" by George Caleb Bingham

Today I concentrated on value - making sure my copy was light enough in the light areas without getting chalky, and dark enough in the darks. These areas get developed together, because having dark enough darks make light areas lighter. So I repainted the darks of the trees, molding the fence by doing so, and repainted the fence to try to get the color closer. The original painting has a lot of very similar colors and values, that only differ slightly, maybe in temperature. As I painted, refining the color, I also refined some detail. I'm doing this gradually. I haven't put the details of the tree branches in yet, because I feel they should be put in over dry paint. I didn't repaint the sky today. I worked on the fence, the house and roof, and the ground. 

Of course, my painting is much brighter than the original. I guess if I really wanted to, I could try to match the paler, more muted colors that Bingham used. But I kind of like the brighter colors. (People are always telling me that they like my colors better! 😉)

Here is the painting at the end of the morning, and again after lunch. I only worked about an hour after lunch and decided to stop early so I could catch the 3:28 train, which takes 15 minutes to walk to. 

Next time, I'll repaint the sky and start to address the details of the light tree limbs and the distant trees and landscape. So I don't think I'll be too much longer on this one!

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New copy, "Cottage Scenery" by George Caleb Bingham

"Cottage Scenery" by George Caleb Bingham

I finally made it back to the National Gallery after a hiatus of several months. I was planning to return in April, but I got Covid and it took me until May 1st to get healthy and feel up to the task.

I chose "Cottage Scenery" (1845) by George Caleb Bingham, because when I paint outdoors, I like to include buildings or other man-made elements in the landscape. This painting isn't very large (25 1/5 x 30 in), so I stretched a canvas measuring 17 x 20 in. This was as close as I could get to the exact proportions (height x width) of the original, which is very important to me, and makes it easier to copy.

I started from scratch with a completely blank canvas. For the first couple of hours, I measured and re-measured, holding a brush at arm's length and sighting down my straight arm with one eye closed, so as to get accurate measurements. I chose a "unit" of measurement, such as the distance between the left side of the house and the left side of the painting, and, holding that distance between the end of my brush and the tip of my thumb, counted how many times that distance would go into the width of the painting. I did the same with the distance between the right side of the house and the right side of the painting, the bottom of the house and the bottom of the painting, the roof and the top of the painting, the fence, the trees, the distant horizon, and so on. To make things more confusing, things didn't always fall into neat categories like "halves" or "thirds", although some of the distances seemed to be "quarters".  I sketched the placement of the different elements with a thin line drawing in paint, and as I adjusted and readjusted, I wiped off and repainted the lines. This process took a couple of hours, and was a little frustrating, but I also realized that I was in my happy place. (I love solving puzzles!) When I was finally satisfied that everything was in about the right place, I could begin to block in the colors. Unfortunately, I was so in the zone that I forgot to take a picture of the drawing phase. Arrggh! Oh well.

I already had some piles of color that I had mixed before I started measuring. I had some of the reddish-brown of the ground, the dark green of the trees, the light gray of the clouds, and the blue of the sky, as well as the lighter areas where the light is hitting the ground and the house. I don't use any earth colors such as burnt siena or yellow ochre - instead, I make rich neutrals by mixing colors such as cadmium orange and violet, which makes a beautiful red-brown. I started to rough these colors in, to cover up the white of the canvas and get the different colors next to each other so I could start to adjust and refine them. I didn't get very far before it was time to go to lunch. I took a photo, and that's when I realized I had forgotten to get a picture of the drawing phase.

As far as I got at lunchtime

After a nice lunch in the National Gallery's cafeteria with my Copyist friends, I got to work finishing blocking in the colors and covering up the white of the canvas. You can't really tell if the colors are correct until you get the colors in place around them. I did a lot of readjusting and finally felt like I had done enough for the first day. I didn't get to the figures that are sitting and standing around the door of the cottage. I was concentrating on the large areas of color and light. I can see where I will need to make corrections in value (dark/light), but overall I'm fairly happy with the start of this copy. I'm looking forward to getting more details around the windows, fence, and figures. There are even tiny cows in the distance! Hope to be back next Thursday! Thank you for reading!

Day 1, copy after "Cottage Scenery" by George Caleb Bingham

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