The Blank Canvas Project

This month, I’ll be completing a painting in real-time - giving the play by play on how a project gets made from start to finish. This is a totally experimental look into my process. I’ll be sharing the ups and down, the high and lows, and everything in between. Stay tuned!

Today: Well, I swallowed hard and covered that bottom thumb in water! This took another hour in the tub wondering what looked the most realistic - I’m still not super happy with how the water line looks. I think I want the water in motion splashing against the hand - it looks still and rippled right now.

Stitching together reference photos has been a huge challenge - trying to keep in mind the universal lighting and tone of the painting while using another photo. . If COVID wasn’t happening I’d have my friends jump in the tub and take a new photo!

Day 1 - The Blank Canvas

Today, I put my first mark on a blank (and baby smooth!) canvas. I sanded and gessoed this baby for a whole week. Seven layers of gesso for seven days to make an absorbant

Day 2 - X,Y Coordinates

Working on my crazy plotting system. I plot all these points like x,y coordinates in middle school to trace the hands onto the canvas. It takes a long time, but I’m a perfectionist and it makes the rest of the painting part so much easier.

Day 3 - Plotting…

Half way through last night! High fived myself after getting in those fingers. I never want to post progress pics because sometimes hours a work looks like nothing. But this is real-time, baby, and I want to show you how long it can take!

Day 4: First Roadblock

A little close up of my project. Couldn’t get a lot more done today and hit a red flag. The arm looks thinner on my painting than in the photograph because it’s deep in shadow. It looks fine when in a photograph, but will look funny in an oil painting. Currently brainstorming ideas how to make the natural distortion read correctly. I am now a little worried, but I have an idea to fix it.

Day 5 - Bath Bomb

Ok guys, sometimes art projects take a strange pivot. I was in the bath with a bathbomb getting bummed about this project that I was so excited to share. I take a bath when I’m stressed out and need to not think. I was looking at my hands and thought “How cool would it be to have my painted hands in this beautiful, healing water?” So, I decided to try and submerge my painted hands in the water. In order not to lose three days of work (D:) I wanted to see if I could add in the water instead of starting all over with a new photograph. Let’s see what happens tomorrow!

Day 6 - A Helping Hand

I got a little help from Andy who wore wet sleeves to work today. It was totally challenging to take pictures without a third person. For some of these I had to literally use my nose to smash that click button!! Some of them turned out lovely. Maybe I should transpose the first pair of hands onto one of these pictures? Decisions, decisions. For now I’ve just spent three hours in the tub and I’m all pruney.

Day 7: Burnt Umber Wash

Got the outline and put on a light wash. This will make it ten times easier to plot out those little divots and shadows in a fleshy hand. It’s a bit rough, but it will work for a first layer. Doing an underpainting means less paint will be needed on the canvas. I like to only paint in up to five layers, I believe that five is what you need at most. I have to leave this to dry for a few days.

Day 8: First Wash

After three days, I literally just brushed a light coat of a color called “unbleached titanium” on the hands, and, because we plotted out the shadows in brown already, you can already see them start to come to life. Tada! Took all of ten minutes. I went back and forth on the color of the bathwater though. Part of me loves the calm gray-blue, but a darker color would make the hands pop more.

Day 9 - Pinks & Blues

Added some more pinks and oranges and blues. Still not sure about that water so I’m doing it slowly! Still so worried about those bottom hands and making the water look realistic around them. 

Day 11 - Two Fingers

I woke up early today and got two fingers in! You can see the difference between the two hands - top (one coat) and bottom (two coats).