Brunswick-Trinidad Mural

It has been a while since I last posted.  Nonetheless work has been progressing on the mural.  Some of the main figures are being refined. 

And some new figures are being painted in. 

I am developing several more of the figures.  There is a lot of music in this mural.  Below are a few close-ups of the block-ins.  These folks are my family and some of my best, most faithful models and talented musicians as well.

Here is my daughter.

This guy will be playing a guitar.  This is my son.

And this woman is my lovely wife.  

Here are a few examples of how the figures develop.

And later as the face is more devolped.  Yesterday I blocked in a bit more detail in the shadow cast from the man’s dance partner and refined the shape of his face.

 And another face as well…just the block in…

and a bit more developed.  I thought this was an appropriate year to paint Longfellow into this Brunswick mural.  Celebrating his 200th birthday this year and of course he is a Bowdoin graduate, class of 1825.

And my trumpet player.

Here I completely changed the face from what I had drawn in.   It is better to have it all planned in, but I have to be willing to change things as the ideas dictate.

This new character is hanging an art show behind and above the people dancing in the street.  When I lived in Mexico, at parties, artwork on paper was often hung above our heads as simple party decor.  I thought this would make a beautiful addition to this festival.  I will paint in copies of artwork done by students in Trinidad, Cuba and also some delightful work by Brunswick’s own Spindleworks artists. 

 A model shortage yesteday so I had to pose myself for the ugly guy on the ladder.

Today more musicians enter the scene.  A trumpet, violin and flute. 

And another Bowdoin alumnus starts to appear.

A few troubles with the camera but that is finally back in order.   Here are a few new images of what has been going on.  Beginning to develop some of the figures.

Another,

And more getting scrubbed in. 

A lot of new paint this week.  I began developing some of the central figures.  A few assistants scrubbed in some undertones for me.  And a lot of mural begins to appear.

This is the central girl who is tossing flowers into the air.  The skin starts with a loose scrub-in of dulled down color.  For figures of this size, bigger than life size, a flat, even undertone paint layer would only yield plastic artificial skin tones.  The loose scrub-in looks messy at first, and seems almost counter productive but actually yields much more dynamic skin when the final tones, highlights and shadows are painted in.

Just beginning to pull out a couple of arms and hands.

Today was a good day of paint.  The acrylic paint is very full bodied, very well pigmented.  I am using zinc white as my mixing white…it is quite transparent, for a white.  I have titanium as well to knock in more opaque highlights.  But at this point the brightest spots are just a lightened yellow ochre.  I am not going to blow my brightest or darkest values until the mural is nearing completion.  I need to make the painting work while in the mid-range of both value and chroma.  This leaves me a lot power still in my palette, should I need it. 

Thoughts of a good friend and painter remind me of the old illustrator’s adage, “the grays make the painting”.   If you use up your highest contrast and most chromatic paints right away you have nothing left in your palette to speak with. 

The paint dries extremely fast.  This is partly the paint but also the the room and the autumn environment around here.  Blending edges and modeling form is a process of smart color and value choices rather than blurring wet paint. 

I am using an acrylic blending medium but I am using it as a thin lubricant on the canvas to paint into rather than mixing this into my paint.  I like my paint full bodied and the blending medium, when mixed into the paint makes it too thin and weedy feeling.  I don’t like it.  However, it does work quite well as a canvas lubricant, giving a few minutes of softer painting.

Some of my characters are pulled from history to dance today in my mural.  Here Joshua Chamberlain begins to show up.

These central figures are larger than life-size, their heads around one foot from chin to top of head.  In the top image here you can see the foot markings on the edge of the canvas used to register the cartoon when transferring the drawing. 

A lot of the mural is just easier to freehand draw in though, rather than the two or three stage transfer process.   With the free drawing I can also add more energy into the figures if I need it.

Yesterday began the real paint.  We need to rig up better lighting to see both the palette and the wall well…a little shake down glitch but not too bad. 

It is good to see some paint starting to go in.  Just a bit of sky going in behind here.

And some undertones here on the figures and clothes…this is just a scrub in for the fabric to give a bit of texture.  Once this is done, I will go back and pull out folds with highlights and shadows.   This scrubby texture will give the dress more motion and interest in the final piece.

and a few musicians to be…

The drawing on the canvas is falling into place.  Some figures from the central group.

her hands…

figures to the left…

one from the center…

and some from the right.