Yesterday evening I cut a section of canvas and assembled the stretcher bars for the Daisy painting. I bought 10M of canvas in 2011 for £165.54, and another 10M (knowing how great this 'Top Gun' material is) in 2015 for £200.28. Now the same canvas costs £300. Top Gun is 100% polyester and is wonderful for painting, far superior to cotton or linen.
One downside to Top Gun is that it can't easily be drawn on, so I use oil paint on tracing paper to transfer the drawing, except that I don't now use actual tracing paper for large paintings like this because it wrinkles like crazy, it is very hygroscopic, and those wrinkles distort a large image more and more. I use polyester drafting film, which does the same job without wrinkling, and is so strong its unrippable (it would probably make a good painting surface itself). It is 4 or 5 times the (already expensive) cost of tracing paper; 10M of polyester drafting film was £69 when I bought it in 2012, now it's £190. This time I hope to re-use it. It should be easy to wipe down after use, but of course, I could only re-use it comfortably if it is for a painting of the same size. Making paintings all an identical size would be far cheaper and efficient, but much less artful. Each idea seems to demand a certain size and shape.
I haven't stretched the canvas, but it is cut and waiting. After that, a sleepless night, probably due to the first sweet thing I ate last evening after my dental operation. It mead me realise how not eating deserts is perhaps always the best option for health.
A steady day today, underpainted the first of the two little panels now known as the Pat Benanatar series, this 'Beware of the Banana Surprise':
An odd painting in many ways, and it looks even odder now. I rarely paint with violets as there are no opaque ones. Here I used cobalt blue and manganese violet, which are semi-transparent, but opaque enough in grey. The face isn't trying to be realistic but stylistic, cartoon-like. The figure had a few problems, partly because it was realistically proportioned. Sometimes, false proportions look better on little figures, fatter arms, stockier build; but also the pose was too simple, too stable, so I modified it into a startled run. The whole painting looks strange to me, even though it matches the plan. Of course, all of the colours can be changed at whim when glazing.
Another £85 of oil paints arrived today, 7 tubes. I have enough paints for many years now, unless I start to paint larger or in impasto. Tomorrow, I'll probably underpaint the other painting of this pair, 'Sisyphus Rolling A Coconut Dangerously Towards To The Critical Mass Of Pat Benatar'.
