"Take Your Choice" day 5

I didn't get too much painting done this visit, because I had to go see the newly opened East Wing of the National Gallery. More on that later in the post.

Walking to the Gallery in the morning, I had to take this picture of the Calder stabile outside the 7th street entrance. It just seemed to be striding along...

I worked mainly on the bottom half today, trying to get the color and value of the box right, and working on the white paper with the gray picture of a town. I'm just going to post these two photos I took of my copy at the end of the day, because I really didn't do much to it after lunch. This was because after my lunch break, I went straight over to the East Wing to check it out... here are just a few highlights:

The entrance to the Modern Art galleries

The new Calder gallery

The rooftop gallery, with the blue chicken and other cool things

The Rothko room

A view down one of the Tower staircases

I took many pictures, but most not good enough to post online. I wandered through the East Wing, up and down the staircases, and more than once found myself coming out into the main area completely disoriented as to where I was in the building. They have added over 12,500 square feet of gallery space with this renovation, which took around 3 years to complete. They have incorporated a vast amount of art from their acquisition of the Corcoran's collection, and have rearranged part of the American Art collection in the West building and moved some of that art over to the East building. The way the art was curated and hung was quite striking. I saw a Cézanne still life hung next to a Picasso next to another Cubist, each having been influenced by the one before. Whole large rooms dedicated to different movements of the 20th century. Juxtapositions and contrasts. I could spend a couple of hours a day over there.

Any of my friends who come visit, I will take you there!!! Schedule your visit now!

"Take Your Choice" day 4

Our hot weather finally broke, and this morning was actually chilly. Today I worked on the top half of the painting. I repainted the wall, still just the basic color, not getting into little details yet. I started seeing mistakes I had made in the drawing - some books leaning too far, others not enough. But I'm going to try not to make myself crazy over this. It's more important to me to get the values and colors right. Still, I'm correcting what I can as I go.

I painted for two hours, then went to lunch. Here is how it looked at the end of the morning:

click on the images for a larger view

After lunch, I went to the National Gallery's library. I wasn't even aware they had a library! (And how many years have I been going there? Ahem.) Anyway, I wanted to look at a book that they had, so I went over there (in the East Building), set up my account, and requested the book. It was called "A Year in Yorkshire", and was a catalog from a David Hockney show. The book had to be read in their Reading Room, so I flipped through it quickly, and took pictures of the paintings with my phone. (I knew this was OK, since they had already told me I could make copies on their copier.) This same book was donated to the Friends of the library I work at the other day, and I tried to buy it from the Friends. But they checked online and found out that it isn't available on Amazon, and is going for $100 and up at an online rare used book seller. They're going to try and sell it online and get a lot more money for it than they could at their used book sale, where hardbacks go for $2! Oh well. It's a gorgeous bunch of paintings, and since I couldn't have it, I decided to go out painting this weekend on Skyline Drive, inspired by David Hockney.

After perusing the book, I went back up and worked on my copy a little more. Here it is at the end of the day:

I stopped early, because I wanted to go outside and draw. It's rare that the weather is so pleasant when I am downtown, and I wanted to take advantage of it. I went in search of a nice tree to draw. On the way, I walked through the Sculpture Garden and photographed this cool four-sided pyramid by Sol Lewitt. Then I went out on the Mall and drew a tree.

The building in the background is part of the Smithsonian, I think Arts and Industries. I haven't been inside it in years, but I remember seeing machines from the Industrial Revolution in there. I spent a very pleasant hour or so sketching this scene, with people walking and jogging by.