An Attagal Weekend

The Gray Scale I made last week was dry enough to varnish and use to read the values
on this black and white reference photograph for this week's portrait practice. Note how
the value of the red stripe in Henry's shirt and the shading in his blond hair is somewhere between #6 and 7 on the scale.
The shading on his face is close to #4

Something has come over me. I cleaned my studio.  Whenever I clean my work space, something's up. Studying values, making charts and now cleaning tells me a new era has begun. I'm excited and energized and curious to see what I'm up to?

I actually went down to the studio  to lay in the lighter colors in the lower foreground of Rain. That never happened. I was on a different mission. I wanted a wall for hanging the color charts. That meant moving a shelving unit loaded with stuff...

...Moving the shelving unit meant removing the stuff to make it light enough to move.  Moving the stuff off the shelves meant I was in up to my dust pan now. Elbow grease and vacuuming were also in the future. The lucky thing about my  cleaning fit on Saturday was Monday is garbage day and a Sunday, in-between, gave me a two day window.  I warned Ellis there was going to be some trash.

Summer Rain in progress, but no progress was made this weekend. This
is a tough painting to photograph. The L120 Nikon has trouble reading the variation of blues.

.....There WAS indeed . trash. A lot of it being paintings I had done these last five years. Funny how I thought they were good then, but horrible now.   I didn't pitch them though. I saved them as history and got back on track. I really wanted a wall.

After a lot of huffing and puffing, I got the space I was after and laid out the area the color charts would take  once completed, (33" x 53").

Unfortunately, I have none to hang at this moment.  Only one chart is dry.  Two are still tacky to the touch. The next one, Terra Rosa, will be done with Titanium White-- juicier than Flake, doesn't hold the mark of the brushstroke and dries faster--and Gamlin's fast dry paint medium.  I ordered Fast Dry White, but it won't arrive till later this week. .

Meanwhile no work got done on Rain, (Summer Rain is the new title). More important progress had been accomplished.  The furnishings have been rearranged, the floor swept, the carpet vacuumed, the papers and drawings relocated above an imaginary flood line, decent painting attempts separated from feeble work, pastels and charcoal stored in their own sheaths in their own portfolio  and a new subject selected for portrait practice.  It really was an attagal weekend. How was yours?


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