Laundry Lines- My Latest Series
For those of you who are familiar with all my work, you know that I have been documenting the beauty of laundry lines since 1999. It's a subject near and dear to my heart. I returned from Italy this past June, 2010 and so I began work on my new series of laundry line paintings based on my studies done in Burano, Venice.
How does a new series begin? With and old idea that I have had kicking around in my head for three years. I wanted to construct a scene of a Burano canal walk made from individual paintings, yet hanging as a whole. So I chose 8 houses because of their shapes , size and colors to be on my canal walk. I worked up small gouache (opaque water based paint) studies to see how they would hang together as a whole. And I made notes of the changes I will be making when I paint them in scale in in oil paint.
Then, I worked up these little studies into scaled up compositions (about two and a half times the little color studies). The largest painting will be 23" x 23". This is determined simply bu what felt "good" to my eye. I don't really have a formula.
In my line studies, I also get to see how the entire composition plays out. It also gives me another chance to make changes before I have the panels built to the non standard sizes. My painting panels are made to fit my paintings; not my paintings to fit standard sized panels. My paintings might be about ordinary things but I do not make ordinary paintings.
All the panels , then need to be primed on the sides because I will be painting parts of the image onto the sides. There are eight and possibly nine paintings that will be included in my Burano canal walk scene.
Then there are 11 other paintings planned , laundry lines, but all in different scales. Below you will see my thumbnail sketches and my scratings about possible scale.
My paintings may look simple but that's how they look. It's not how they are done. The work and fun is about to begin.
How does a new series begin? With and old idea that I have had kicking around in my head for three years. I wanted to construct a scene of a Burano canal walk made from individual paintings, yet hanging as a whole. So I chose 8 houses because of their shapes , size and colors to be on my canal walk. I worked up small gouache (opaque water based paint) studies to see how they would hang together as a whole. And I made notes of the changes I will be making when I paint them in scale in in oil paint.
Then, I worked up these little studies into scaled up compositions (about two and a half times the little color studies). The largest painting will be 23" x 23". This is determined simply bu what felt "good" to my eye. I don't really have a formula.
In my line studies, I also get to see how the entire composition plays out. It also gives me another chance to make changes before I have the panels built to the non standard sizes. My painting panels are made to fit my paintings; not my paintings to fit standard sized panels. My paintings might be about ordinary things but I do not make ordinary paintings.
All the panels , then need to be primed on the sides because I will be painting parts of the image onto the sides. There are eight and possibly nine paintings that will be included in my Burano canal walk scene.Then there are 11 other paintings planned , laundry lines, but all in different scales. Below you will see my thumbnail sketches and my scratings about possible scale.
My paintings may look simple but that's how they look. It's not how they are done. The work and fun is about to begin.
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