"Kitty Up": Progress Report

Eee, it's exciting.  The first update on "Kitty Up" (new oil painting).

I've always wanted to document a painting from blank canvas to completion and now I can!

Let's start at the beginning.

Blank canvas.  18x24

I wasn't sure about the size.  See, I kind of let time get away from me and I thought I didn't even have a canvas.  But I found this one upstairs (ok, the wife found it) and decided to just go with the flow.  I worried I might want to go a bit smaller but "Jackie and Xerxes" and "Bye Week" are both smaller so I've done that already.  I definitely didn't want to go larger (a la "Baby Elephant Walk").  Transporting the larger canvases is a pain in the butt.  My first painting ("Vaguely Dog-like") is right around this size (perhaps a wee bit larger) so I'm familiar with the dimensions.

So, what am I aiming for?

That's Mr. Roboto riding his trusty feline steed, Timothy.  "Kitty Up"

So, in the course of 2-2.5 hours (class is 6:30-9:30 p.m.--but sometimes we're a little late or the instructor does a little power point of a certain artist or type of are--last night we got an intro to cubism) this is how far I got:

Not a bad bit of progress.  I kind of like how Timothy looks like he's wearing a ski mask.  I tend to do that with faces.  I leave the eyes unpainted instead of laying down a base and then painting the eye over it.  Especially when the background is black (and the eyes are white) I don't want to have to put that many lighter layers over dark (it's annoying).  And clearly Timothy's eyes are going to shift and change around as we move along (eventually I probably will cave and cover the whole face and they lay the features in over top--but not yet).  The eye we can fully see is clearly too narrow right now.

I like these progress reports.  I can really see what needs shifted.  Mr. Roboto's head/face is clearly not in the right direction (in the photo he's clearly turned more to the right) and his limbs are all kinds of wonky (especially that leg--woah!).  But it's a solid start.

I look forward to tackling Mr. Roboto's spring.  Getting the fine metallic shine will be fun (and getting the thread filament visible will be a challenge).  Getting the corduroy texture will be fun, too.  But I'm a long way from that stage.

But for now, I'm pleased.