Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Day 8














Not a whole lot to report today, although I did have a productive day in the studio on Monday. I finished up a few of the smaller pieces I had had going before I started the barns, and put the final coat of Liquin on several pieces. I don't use a varnish, I prefer to simply apply a clear coat of Liquin, which is the medium I use, over the finished work. It gives it a consistent, shiny finish and kind of pulls the whole thing together.

I have essentially finished four barn paintings. On Monday I did some final adjustments on three of them and I will do the final coat on them today. I also did the first layers of colors on this one:















and it gave me some trouble. I am sorry that I didn't document all of the changes now, but I was pretty caught up in the process. I settled on the color of the sky and the roof fairly quickly, but the barn! I painted that thing four different times. Lavender, orange, red, blue and then finally, the blue/purple that it is now. I am still not sure about it but I can only rub paint off a few times, otherwise the previous surface starts to get too scuffed up. Often if I am totally frustrated with the colors, I wipe everything off and leave it to work on again the next day. I left this color because I thought the surface was already becoming affected. I may make some adjustments to this barn tomorrow (it needs to dry a bit more), although after looking at it today I like it better then I did last night.

Today I am feeling pretty good about getting everything done. And next week I will start posting images of the finished paintings.

2 comments:

June Parrish Cookson said...

WOW! Tracy, this is one of my favorites. Absolutely gorgeous piece. I really like the barn door opening so the viewer can see the background of sky. Your colors are dynamite. Fantastic painting.

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks, June. After looking at it a bit more today, I definitely like it more than I did last night. I have just a few minor things to do to it and then I am going to call it finished!