day three

So here is the finished table, and some closeups of the animals - also note Zoe's fantastic flowers and Cole's fabulous foliage.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                   

day two - picnic table

So before I jump right into day two, a word about day one-  My student helper Zoe and I had a great start, as my husband had helped prep the table.  So we jumped right into the painting.  On day two we got another student helper Cole.  The three of us had a good time and worked hard as you can see by the progress:

Turtle all done - on to the picnic table!

So here is the finished turtle, and the first day of the picnic table project.  THANKS to all the people who voted on facebook!

More to come...

THANK YOU!

Thanks to all who voted, I will be painting my design down at the museums the first week in August.  I will put up some pictures then, it should be fun.  I can't wait to meet the art student who will be helping me.

New location

So here in New England we apparently now have a 'rainy season', go figure.  for the last week it has rained once a day, sometimes very hard.  The forecast calls for rain for another week at least.  Today we have a flood warning.  Soooo painting outside, even under a tent is not the greatest plan.   Here is plan B.  The porch.  A little cramped, but with the help of a fan a little dryer.  Did I mention the humidity?  70%!!!  This IS New England right?  Enough complaining, it is still more fun to paint on a rainy day than not to paint on a sunny one!  :)  

What you are looking at is the under-painting, if your not familure with the term look up the postings for November 2008 where I show the steps from composing to finished painting.  The colors will change, for the most part my underpainting are the deepest tones or the shadows of the true colors.  This will be most evident in the base that will be lightly colored sand when it is done.  I'll update the progress - later.

Fun summer project

So I'm back in my dad's driveway painting another fiberglass public art project.  This time it's a turtle that will soon be 'Swimming' all the way to Florida!  The design is not my own, each artist was given a design to execute based on a theme.  Mine is Mardi Gras and the design is very graphic with bold colors and a geometric look, tricky on a 3D object.  I think it's going well and it's always fun to have a nice big thing to paint.  Check in later, I will put up more pictures as the project progresses.

old project, new post

Going over my blog, I noticed that I never posted my dog project.  At the time I suppose I didn't want to spoil the surprise, as it was a gift to West Springfield's artists that worked on their terrier project.  They had painted a sneaker for Springfield, so the Art & Sole project people wanted to do the same, after several rather uninspired attempts, they asked me to work something out.

My idea was to 'wrap' the not so little guy in a map of West Springfield, with just his face breaking through.  This is him finished and sitting in my little art room. (don't focus on the mess please)  I applied an acrylic mache type method for the paper tearing away. The map was by no means an accurate depiction of the city, but I tried to represent the highlights.  No easy task when your painting on a dog!

Here are a couple of details I really liked.  It was good fun, and I hope the people of West Springfield think I did their city proud. 

All installed and looking great!

Here is the the sneaker on site at the Springfield Symphony Hall. It's hard to beleive the project is over. What a great way to spend the summer, I am on the look out for other projects of this kind.

IT'S FINISHED !!!

ALL DONE !!!

I could not have done it without my hubby, he started by getting the idea to use my father's garage as a studio, de-spidered the garage, built a wheeled thing to move the giant shoe around, helped with research, took the photos of my progress, and finally encouraged me to keep going, or back off as needed.

Painting Like Mad!

Real progress going on now, The levels are shaping up. Blocked in and details are making it come together. Everyone who has seen it have been so pleased, it encourages me. I have had lots of visits from family while I am working. It's always nice to take a break and hear their words of support.

Work on the shoe begins

After cleaning the bugs off, there were areas that needed to be repaired with some bonda. Nasty stuff! The primer applied by the manufacturer was dicey so major sanding was required.

Finally I was able to sketch out the first couple of levels. Pynchon's founding in 1636 was the starting point.

Each layer wraps around the shoe - 1600's 1700's 1800's 1900's and present day at the top.