Yet More Updates

Since I'm at the home stretch, progress goes more quickly

I will simply post photos & at this time let them speak for themselves

first thing done, when I had done my blue swatches 

first audience and all of 'ghost' bridge done

after skies added in

As can be seen in the last one, it is really starting to look like the thing.

Updates and Process

Well on my way to finishing, I present some images from recent progress:

As can be seen, all the image of the main image has been laid out in white. Now is just a matter of laying out the rest of the groundwork, and finishing the edges.

I also have a few photos and videos of process:

Painting setup. Due to leg injury am forced to paint on couch with leg raised

Swatch studies, so that I can both pick paints I want, and see how new combinations look.

video explaining swatch process

Now that i have begun the painting process in earnest, the fun time has begun! All the preparation has led to this moment. It is a fairly quick process, if I have the chance to just sit down and paint, from here to termination. I have picked the shapes of the holes to inform how the composition will go, using the natural holes in the wood to represent where holes, dark areas, or tunnels were in the composition. Also the lines have been matched up to where horizon lines or the limits on the Bridge. In any event, I am very happy to have gotten this far, in spite of all weird obstacles. Am also adding a few other photos for a blog post I neglected to write a few days ago, re. actual preparation of the wood.

Wood in process of being clear gessoed

Wood in process of being clear gessoed

Wood in process of being clear gessoed

Video of Wood in process of being clear gessoed

Process Coloured Sketch

I have done one coloured  study, and it ended up taking a long while, because I possibly spent an two hours or more per layer.  Halfway through this I was like "is this really necessary?" but by then I was fully committed and couldn't turn back.

So I am sharing all the layers, same pencils, etc. This is a throwback to a printmaking technique that I learned in college called lithography:

under this process, a person can create a complex composition by adding the colours in layers. IE first the yellow, then you ink the stone with that colour and run it through the paper, and wash, rinse, repeat for every colour, manipulating the stone so that the proper things are highlighted. The trick is to match the paper so that it all fits together. I am doing a crappy job of describing it, but what I'm basically doing is doing it a colour at a time, with the watercolour pencils, and having it all add up.

Yellow 

Orange

Pink before watercolour

Pink after Watercolour 

Red before Watercolour 

Red after Watercolour 

Brown

Green

Blue + touchups (E brown, black, etc)

Overall pretty satisfied with how it came out- some thigs I am unhappy about insofar as tonalities, but these problems would be resolved with oils because this medium of just using like 7 or 8 colours only has its limits

Wood and Sizing

Still stumbling under a bum leg, but have reason to be optimistic. I see the doctor tomorrow who will have more to say about this. I believe it's healing well.

Jim went ahead and prepared the wood for painting - first he has sanded it, first by using the coarse sandpaper, then the light grade sandpaper, all the way to the lightest sandpaper.

More on this video here:

The next part of the journey is, how to edit the painting to account for the canvas size? I will on facebook her put forth 2 options, one is to just edit out the sky and put as much of the action as I can, and another option is to just make a smaller canvas so that the entire picture will fit?

This is the question I sought to answer next, by taking the wood, the original painting, and through PHotoshop, trying out different layout scenarios

Here is the first, straightforward one:

Simply to reduce the size of the painting so that most of it would fit onto the canvas, leaving large portions of the bare wood visible. If I were to go on this option, I probably would not have such a stark edge, but more or less have it be softer or more blended or at least more round



The second option is to try to fit more of the  dramatic scenery into the canvas, which would mean eliminating some of the information, in this case, the sky so that the drama of the crowds watching takes precedence:

As can be noticed, my demos take the hole of the wood into account. I have to say here that even though I like the fact that there's more painting space and thus more details for the audience (and that's where Turner himself was at one point; at the beginning of the fire he and some art students rented out boats and were out there in the thick of it, sketching, then, when the roof of the building collapsed, everyone inexplicably laughed), I miss the dramatic, awesome sky and am not crazy re how the composition holds up.



The third version also removed information, but this time favouring the sky:

I actually like how this one looks the best, though Jim and others have noted how eliminating the drama of the onlookers is a big mistake.



The fourth version is based on #1, but involves making the decision to artificially extend the entire painting to fit through all the edges:

The advantage is it keeps everything in there - the sky, the audience - and it also makes use of the entire piece of wood. The painted version would obviously look a lot slicker than this quick Photoshop mock-up, but the basic idea is I would extend the sky and the bridge to the right, and the audience to the left. One disadvantage, aside from making stuff up, is that the exposition area is still small. This seems to me a visually more appealing option that just the small square though, or of leaving a lot of wood. Note again where the hole lies.



The fifth version is actually my favourite version - it actually uses the sky version (#3) which was my favourite one due to how much I liked the dramatic sky:

Here I made the #3 option, but extending the bridge as in the previous version, but also expanding the left side, and actually choosing to put all the boat people/rubberneckers/sketchers to the left hand side. In other words, I am redoing the composition, reinventing history, if you will.

I think it looks the best. I will look for feedback from others, either online or in the real world, but I'm pretty sure I will choose to do it this way.