Chorus Girls, 10 x 20" oil on canvas, for the Black & White Show at Maple Grove ArtsCenter. Available, $195.
My source photo, above. I found it fit a 1:2 format perfectly, and I had a 10 x 20" canvas on hand, so we were off to the races. First step, get the drawing established. Below, the drawing in brown pastel pencil, which is easy to erase or paint over. Regular graphite pencil is NOT, so I don't use it when I paint.
I don't often outline forms before I paint them. This time, I wanted a little bit of a graphic flavor to the painting, so I used a liner brush to establish my drawing before I began blocking in the light and shadow.
Much as I loved the tractor wheels in the source photo, I really couldn't use them in the painting. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice things you love a lot, in order to get what you love the most. In this picture, I loved the sense of movement and rhythm of the hens and I'd have lost that if I'd junked up the background, so the tractor had to go.
Oil paints usually work best if you start with the shadows and then add more and more light, so that's what I did here. Overall this is very thin paint, and will be dry to the touch in a couple days.
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