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Brollies

"Plant, Ornament, Window," 4' x 5', oil on canvas, 2010

I guess, technically, the date above should read "2001-2010" since I started the thing about nine years ago, worked on it a tiny bit a few years ago, and only finished it a few weeks ago. What I abandoned some time in 2001 was just the rough underpainting...and some minor touch-ups and textures were added a few years ago. There was still about 90% left to paint. In fact, there are still white highlights I need to add to complete the painting, so, technically, it's still not finished and I should really put "2001-2011" as the dates...

This is a close-up of the window in this painting and also this painting. I translated the titles for that Interiors series into rudimentary French because I felt naming them based on the subject in the picture to be too banal in English, and they might sound better, more interesting, and maybe even exotic in French. For some reason, rather than translating this one into French, I used the working title "Brollies" (despite no umbrellas appearing anywhere in this painting) when mentioning this on Facebook or Twitter. And yet the official title is a banal English itemization of the subjects in the picture. Such is my whim.

Also, quite whimsically, I chose to have as accompaniment during my painting of Brollies all the time travel movies I own. And I chose to watch them in reverse chronological order of their release. Here is the list and the order in which I watched them:

Terminator 3 (2003)
The Time Machine (2002)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
12 Monkeys (1995)
Time Chasers (1994) (the MST3K version)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (19 July 1991)
Terminator 2 (3 July 1991)
Back to the Future 3 (1990)
Back to the Future 2 (24 November 1989)
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (17 February 1989)
Star Trek: The Voyage Home (1986)
Back to the Future (1985)
The Terminator (1984)
Time Bandits (1981)
Time After Time (1979)
The Time Machine (1960)

I find I'm using a #4 brush more and more these days and I used this one on Brollies for everything in the painting except for the white window areas:


I find it comfortable to use a small brush like this for tiny areas of subtle, almost impressionistic, colour mixing.
Am I crazy to use such a small brush for such a large painting? Quite possibly. Here's the painting in my kitchen, shown for scale:


This painting will be for sale at my Etsy shop soon. It's still wet (and did I mention slightly unfinished?) and wouldn't ship well in such a condition. I'll provide a better photo of the painting then, too, I promise.

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