Yay! Six days of Paul Newman! I really like to paint him with a beard. I'm not thinking this looks very much like him, but I didn't have a lot of time to paint him. I really slapped the paint on this one tonight, as you can see. If you look closer, you might see something else - missing! Those large canvas pores that riddle the rest of my paintings.
Lots to talk about today! First, I got up late and was determined to paint on a better surface than the cheap .47 cardboard canvas boards I've been using. I paint on 6x8 mainly. Honestly I couldn't make myself spend $5 on a decent board, so I decided to go the handyman route. I went to Lowe's and got 3 2'x2' hardwood plywood pieces that were 1/8 of an inch thick. Then I got out the saw horses, made myself a table, clamped it down, measured and sawed and ended up with 18 6x8 boards, and another 18 of various sizes like 5x7s and such. Then I took over the kitchen and gessoed the heck out of those babies. That took the majority of my day. Even after gessoing them four times they were still too absorbent. I put a couple of coats of white acrylic on them and that did the trick.
Here's an interesting picture comparison of my old canvas and my new one followed by my kitchen disaster!
I spent $10 on the boards, so doing it myself saved a ton of money and I honestly think I ended up with better quality. I am soooo happy to have some better supports on which to paint.
So the other thing interesting today was my son invited some friends over (they are all in their teens) and they came in the kitchen where I usually display the last two or three paintings I've done and they asked me who that was in the paintings. I said Paul Newman, and they said, "Who's that?" Ha!
