January 10, 2016 – Margaret McCarthy Hunt Art

Ilenia after about an hour and a half of painting. Acrylic 30×36 hardboard panel

Always a fun weekly event.

I thought she was going well for working in the dark. For some brilliant reason I had my easel turned AWAY from the light. Maybe because we breeze in right before start time. Hopefully next time I will set it up right.

Obvious problem was the bottom leg was too long. Her knee sticks out to far. I think that was due to slight shifts in the pose during breaks. Hard to resume the exact pose every time.

Here she is now. Knee shortened. Top hip lengthened a bit on the left. All that foreshortening is such a pain.

The background needs more work. The brown is too dark and those triangles at her feet need to go! 😳

Hard to paint such a big piece in a few hours. I think I have about five hours in it now. Dos I say I use big brushes.

Ilenia by Al Beyer – oil – at least 3×4′

This is Al Beyer’s aka painting. He was painting a few feet to my left. Always interesting to see how he goes about painting the model.

And how different the model looks just a few feet to my right or left. Al to my left barely saw her head.

Lee drawing on my right had her full profile whereas I barely saw her nose.

Als after two hour session which is really an hour and a half or so.
Colors used: all golden or liquitex -titanium white, nickel Azo gold, pyrrole red, cad yellow, ultramarine blue, burnt umber, alizarin Crimson. I buy artist grade but whichever is cheaper or the color I like better.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

What do you do with all thosepostcards you pick up on your travels!? Mine usually stay in a cubby hole in the desk til I have a clean up and toss them.

Sad to say I the only thing I bought for this book was the Eiffel Tower on the front when we were in Les Andelys and of course the postcards.

I collected a lot of ephemera like the items on the back. I have two bags full. I needed a map for the accordion part of the book. Did I bring ONE map back. Not a one.

Luckily I found some copyright free maps on the internet and printed it out. I printed several but only used this one.

The accordion was also made from the map.

Here’s a shot of the book with the accordion extended. Each postcard is backed with vellum so that you can journal on it about your trip. Thinking I may glue some more of my ephemera in it.

I have a large bag of stamps left from when I did a lot of mixed media. Could I find it?! After hours of looking I did and NOT ONE French stamp. Finally I did yesterday morning. An hour and a half of going thru the bag – stamp by stamp – I finally found about a dozen. I actually had separated them back when I got them but put them in with the Italian stamps.

I had several that were larger than the rest and wanted to use them anyway so I cut them down and mounted them on some paper that I already had. Since of course I now had a surplus of stamps I had to add a few to these pages.