Marie in the Meadow, WIP

Marie in the Meadow, WIP

It's taken a long time, but I've discovered a horrible truth about myself: I shouldn't buy nice things, because I'll never use them.  Case in point, gorgeous gallery wrapped canvas.  I have several of these lying around my office, all languishing with backgrounds for paintings that will never be completed.  Why?  Because when the canvas is so nice then the painting must be too, and I find that creating anything with such a high standard to begin with is impossible.  So I never start.  Thus I haven't painted anything that one could actually call a proper painting since college.  In a painting class. 

So I was at JoAnn Fabrics, looking at the canvases and thinking, 'Oh, wouldn't it be nice and calming to paint something?  Wouldn't that be great?  Then you could hang it on the wall if you like it, or hock it on etsy if you don't... Yeah, that sounds awesome.  Hm, what should I get?'  I was drawn to the gallery wrapped stuff, of course, because it's the BEST, but then I thought about it and realized that it would collect dust, looking lovely and full of potential...  But in the end, a waste of money and depressing.  Instead I got a two for one deal that's got the staples showing on the sides.  UGLY.  But look!  I painted something on it.  And it's pretty great so far!

I took pictures of some of the details with the camera on my phone, so they're crap, but you get the idea.

The painting is based off a still from the movie Marie Antoinette, with Marie and three of her gal pals sitting in a meadow.  They're all wearing gorgeous dresses and hats, and it seemed like a fun thing to paint.

It's been fun so far.  I'm trying to be very painterly with this, as my former painting teacher always complained that I was painting like I was drawing, and that's really not the way to go about it.  I did the trees in the background yesterday, and the faces today.  I'll start on the hats this weekend, and maybe block in the dresses.

Unfortunately, my brain was stupid and I decided to use acrylics instead of oils, so painting the faces has been a trickier process than I would have liked.  Acrylics don't blend like oils, because they dry out too quickly for that, so I've made the same skin color three times and tried to recreate shadow colors a dozen more.  But Marie's face turned out lovely, and since the other girl has the excuse of wearing a hat I don't have to fret too much over the excess of shadow around her eye.

Marie in the Meadow, acrylics on canvas.  Work in progress as of November, 2010.