Winter Bounty - Progress

Here is the next layer I added today to Winter Bounty.

I continued to work transparently in the darks, and midtone areas (i.e., the wood tones on the back of the bench table). Here are the colors I used:

• Ultramarine blue + Burnt umber + Viridian for the painted surface of the bench table
• Transparent Oxide Orange + Burnt Siena+ Burnt umber for most of the wood surface on bench back and mushroom drawer pull
• Cadmium orange + Yellow ochre added to the basic wood tone mixture for the lighter areas, including touches of Unbleached titanium + cerulean blue for a few of the lightest and coolest spots (yes, these mixtures have body and were no longer very transparent!)
• Ultramarine blue + Burnt umber + Alizarin crimson for the crow
• Vermillion for the ribbon
• Unbleached titanium + cerulean blue + Transparent Orange oxide for shadow areas on the skates

I am having fun working on this one... I think it is my attachment to the crow. I think about his brief life... what he saw, what brought him down.

Up until recently, I kept Salem, my taxidermied crow, in a studio window, sort of gazing out. One day I noticed one of the (very many) crows who frequent our yard was perched on the roof of our first floor, looking up and into the window where Salem rested. I wondered if he "recognized" one of his fellows...? The very next day, I looked out the window and saw two crows, perched on the first floor roof, just as the one had been the day before, both looking into the window, apparently at Salem! I fancied that they were lotting a rescue mission... and although I was tempted to follow the drama, I decided to move Salem so he was no longer visible, worrying my local crow friends that there was one of them, imprisoned by the same woman who put apples and corn out for them.

More to come after this layer dries.

WIP: Winter Bounty

I have started this still life this past weekend. I had been wanting to do another painting using my precious taxidermy crow, but needed to have "the right" composition. For quite a while I did not have an inspired idea... then I got two! This is one of them...

The arrangement is set up on a green painted nineteenth century bench table (the table top flips up to form a back, with the drawer shelf forming a bench when the table top is not needed). The crow stands on the bench next to a pair of ice skates on the crow's left. (I used a clear glass jar to help hold him upright). On his right is a cast-off scarf. Above the crow is a red ribbon that cascades down over the flipped table top, and there is a note tacked to the underside of the flipped top.

The note is actually a 19th century handwritten posting of bounty to be awarded for dead starlings and crows turned in to the Philadelphia authority. I found the bounty facsimile on the internet and printed it out on cream colored paper.

The photos here show the initial underpainting, done in raw umber with highlights wiped out, on the 30" x 24" linen canvas.

Another image shows the bounty notice I printed out, and the final image shows the local color painting phase, on my easel with the studio life set up in the background.

Here are the colors I used for this first color phase:

Yellow Ochre

Burnt Umber

Burnt Sienna

Transparent Red Oxide

Alizarin Crimson

Ultramarine Blue

Viridian

I expect to have this layer dry and able to accept the next phase by this weekend... and will post my progress at that point!