Vintage Tablecloth
Oil on Linen Panel, 16x20"
This my last oil painting of 2011. Oil painting is the specifier. The last two paintings posted were watercolors. The model is reclining on a table cloth that belonged to my mother. It is only card table sized but I have made it much larger than it actually is by having it cascade across the background. I then placed everything on a night time Lake Michigan beach. It is almost pure fantasy.
Reclining poses are a challenge in several ways: foreshortening is always an issue; resolving the entire space containing a compact horizontal figure is another. Making stuff up solves the latter while pure struggle solves the former. My mother's table cloth was an inspiration. It helped a lot with the still very saturated colors of its flower pattern. I had placed a deep blue ground into the upper part of the painting just to kill all that daunting white of the canvas. That was for the first session. Then I created the cascade in the second session. The paint was dry which allowed for the application of all that white without it getting contaminated by the background blue.
What a feast for the eyes. I'll bet your mother is secretly tickled with this. A great way to end 2011--one of your absolute best; actually, one of the best I've seen anywhere. More fantasy paintings, please.
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