I’ve been making do with studio work lately. I’d really like to get out and paint but the weather has been a bit uncooperative…too cold, too much snow, too rainy…you know. Any old excuse to stay inside. Fortunately I’ve got a lot of studio work to keep me busy. There is always admin stuff to do; photographing paintings, entering them into the inventory system, updating the calendar with events I got accepted into or didn’t make the cut, framing…you get the idea.
I received a commission approval in December that’ll keep me busy for several weeks. We had originally talked about it last summer. The client finally gave me the go ahead.I’m pretty excited about this one. It’s the largest easel painting I’ve done and measures 72″x84″. I’ll do the math for you…6 feet by 7 feet. I’ve started taking some photos to show the progress to the client of the process. I’ll share them here with you if you’d like.

The 12×14 inch color study of what I’ll do on the large canvas

These are the custom made stretcher bars assembled on the floor of the gallery/studio

Yours truly stretching the canvas onto the stretcher bars.

The beast is on the easel.

I like to paint on a toned canvas. This is going to be a bit of a reach however.

The ladder helps.

and here it is, the toned canvas on the easel. This picture gives you a sense of the scale of the project.

I’ve done larger paintings but they’ve been on the side of a wall, never on a stretched canvas this big. I don’t know how long it’ll take to finish but I’m looking at probably a month anyway. It all depends on drying time and how things flow. Sometimes a painting comes together quickly and other times it takes awhile. Sort of out of my control when it takes on a life of it’s own.

Stay tuned. As the piece develops, I’ll post some more. This will be fun.