The Riders, Day 2

Today I started by painting in the sky. I had toned the whole canvas yellow, which turned out to be the wrong color. It's actually got a more orange underpainting. And I shouldn't have included the sky, but that's OK, because today I painted the sky in and it covered the underpainting. Then I started working my way down the landscape. The museum was pretty full today, and a lot of people wanted to talk to me, asking me things like, can anybody just come in here and paint? So I got to educate a lot of people about how to become a Copyist. And everyone was so complimentary, it makes up for the fact that you get interrupted a lot.

I had gotten an early start, took the Metro, and arrived at the museum just as the doors were opening. My initial block-in last week was pretty accurate (how did that happen?) but I found plenty of corrections to make when I got down to the jockeys. My canvas is slightly less wide in proportion to its height than the original, so things don't really work out the same way, especially in that clump of horses, riders and negative space, but I guess it's good enough. I love how the horses blend in with each other - Degas didn't bother defining everything. It's a very gestural painting, it really has a feeling of motion. I stopped as soon as I started feeling tired, which was about 3:00. I think this copy might be done in another couple of weeks. 

Click the images for a larger view.

We're back!

The National Gallery has resumed the Copyist program, after suspending it for three years because of COVID. I had actually been on a hiatus since June 2019, because I was still working full time and just didn't have the energy to spend one of my two days off per week going in to DC and copying all day. Then the pandemic hit and they suspended copying. I retired in July 2021 and have been eagerly waiting for the Copyist program to resume, and now it has.

I am copying Edgar Degas' "The Riders". Here is the original:

I've been looking at this painting for years, wondering if I should try copying it. I stretched my canvas a little smaller than the original, as is required, and I stained it yellow. I wish I had used more of an orange color for the base layer, because that's what it looks like Degas did. I worked for about two hours today, blocking it in, trying to keep it loose and scribbly, like the painting. This is as far as I got today. I decided to stop before I was tempted to go too far, since the painting is so sketchy and thin.

It felt great to be back copying at the Naitonal Gallery. I enjoyed chatting with visitors who were curious about the Copyist program. One nice lady told me I should stop and hang it on the wall! But I'm going to keep going. To be continued next Wednesday!