New Collaborative Piece - The Laundry Line

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A badly-taken picture of the laundry line picture (in black & white and in color)
These are the 2 slices of the
original inspiration photo.
(I'm currently working on
the right-side photo)



As I mentioned in a previous post, I am supposed to be concentrating on painting a slice of the Laundry Line.  

I was actually able to spend some time on it and have gotten to the point of being almost-done.   I will admit that it has been hard to get motivated to do -- it is not my favorite subject and I just don't find it inspiring. 







Work has begun, the
shirt and blanket are painted
So you're probably wondering why the heck I agreed to do a section of the painting if I didn't care for the picture.  



For 2 main reasons - 1, I like working collaboratively (it's so fun to see how other artists interpret the same image) and 2, I enjoy challenging myself to do something I wouldn't normally do (I think that's how we grow as individuals... by challenging ourselves to step outside of our comfort zones!).

While I don't care for the subject matter, I have managed to find things I enjoy about it (or I wouldn't be painting it at all!).  I do love playing with textures and in this painting, I have hard textures of brick and cement, and then soft textures of fabric to play with. 


Color and texture added to the bricks and cement

I like the fabric's textures because the folds of the fabric is interesting to create using highlights, shadows, and lots of faint color changes.

Next I played with the hard textures. Adding color and texture to the bricks and cement at the top.  That was a LOT of fun!  

 Color-play is always enjoyable, but I also experimented with dripping and splattering cold wax (to protect white highlights) and dripping and splattering greys and blacks for texture of the brick.  

 I accidentally created a few bigger-splats (which didn't make me happy, but in silk painting - you work with whatever happens!)



My mostly-finished painting
and some of my painting
set-up. (I was at a retreat
and had to squeeze all
of my stuff onto 1 table)
The last part I worked on before I ran out of time, was the wooden beam at the bottom, and some bricks and plants near the wood.  I got the bricks mostly done (I need to put them back into shadows more) and the plants started, but not done.  The wood turned out pretty well (or at least I think it did!). 

So now it's just a matter of finishing the bricks and plants and then figuring out how to get the laundry line in (I thought I preserved the white with cold wax - turns out I didn't).    Then it will be time for steaming, trimming the fabric (because my slice is actually far narrower than I painted), and mounting.  Gotta get it done in the next two weeks because that was our commitment (oh boy). 





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