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!