After a lot of drama involving warped stretcher bars as a result of my not using a brace and stretching the canvas too tight, I was finally able to get back into the National Gallery with a blank (braced and unwarped) canvas to start my next copy, "The Concert" by Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst. You can read about the painter on the National Gallery's website by clicking here.
Here is a photo of the original painting:
I've been admiring this painting for years, and thinking of copying it, but always decided against it - until now. I thought it would be crazy hard - there are so many people crowded into a small space, and the colors are so bright, and so many portraits, and hands, and fabrics, and, and, and. But this is exactly the kind of scene I love to draw - musicians playing music! (I always sketch at concerts!) I decided that I'm ready to tackle it!
The original painting is large - 48" x 80". We aren't allowed to exceed 40" in any dimension, so my copy is the largest it's allowed to be - 24" x 40", which is half size. (I strive to keep my copies as close to the height x width proportions as the original, so this one was easy to re-size.) As I mentioned above, the first time I stretched the canvas, I didn't use a brace, and the 40" inch pieces warped. I bought some heavy-duty stretcher bars, but when they arrived, I decided not to use them because it would've been too heavy and cumbersome to carry around in the Gallery. Happily, after taking the canvas off the old stretcher bars and leaving them alone for a few days, they miraculously un-warped, and I was able to brace it and re-stretch it without any trouble.
I helped myself out by pre-measuring and dividing my blank canvas into fourths in each direction, and I also printed out a copy of the painting and folded that into fourths. I planned to use this "cheat sheet" to double-check my drawing, and it did make it so much easier! Here is what that looked like:
I referred to it to get make sure that all the heads were in the correct places, and the hands, etc. If I had just relied on drawing the painting by eye and measuring everything visually as I went, it would have taken so much longer. I paid special attention to the negative spaces throughout the painting - the shapes and sizes of these areas would help define the figures and objects. I was happy that before the end of the day, I had a pretty accurate drawing on the canvas. (My "drawing" consisted of thinned paint - a neutral violet gray that I mixed and applied with a small, pointed brush, much like I would use a stick of charcoal. To make corrections, I used a paper towel dipped in Gamsol.)
Here is my painting at the end of Day One - all the figures are in place, and I know where their hands and instruments will be. Next time, I will start to lay in the color. I hope I'm able to go slowly with this one, because it deserves the time. I'm excited to be copying this painting, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun!
Thanks for reading!
Click the images for a larger (and un-cropped) view.
