At different times I've hung artwork in my front porch windows, and get plenty of nice feedback about it. There are fourteen windows out there, four on each side of the front door and three each on the ends. Plenty of room for artwork!
Just recently I've hung the big drafts of the book cover paintings, to keep them unfolded and out of my way, and because I like seeing them.
A lady stopped by the shop where I was working the other day and told me that she had seen the Characters (of Mamm of Perth) in my front porch! It took me a minute to realize that she hadn't been hallucinating but was referring to the painting hanging there. Made me smile.
As this my artwork blog, perhaps it would be a good place to put the process of getting that painting done.
1. Right off the bat I used a full sized bed sheet vertically, projected the images I wanted to use for patterns onto it, and sketched them in. I needed more horizontal space and the images weren't exactly what I wanted so I scrapped this one and started over.
2. Here's the paper mock-up I decided on after a lot of image printing and making many and many 'paper dolls' to play with and rearrange. I also took lots of photos of the faces of my volunteer 'Character Reps'.
3. This is the yew tree I chose after looking at photos of hundreds of them. I wanted the family to look like they were striding right out from the tree.
4. Here and below are a trial I did. I wanted to back paint the background for the painting, and needed to know what to expect, whether the back painting would bleed through the images I blocked out on the front, or what. It looked like it might work, so I got to blocking the figures onto the front of the painting. This time I went with marking out a section four by six feet so as to have a painting that would translate well to the four by six inch size called for by the book cover design.
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5. Blocking in the figures just means painting them as silhouettes on the face of the painting so the back painting wouldn't come through and I'd have the solid color to paint on rather than having to fight with trying to paint one design over the distraction of the one already there. Above is the face of the painting; below is the reverse showing through using a backlight.
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6. Once the blocking was done I projected the image of the tree onto the face of the painting, checking to see how it might look, getting it to fit ... then I penciled it in.
7. Above is the Yew sketched in with the figures, front view. Below is the reverse side of the painting with a backlight. I went ahead and used a marker to make the lines stronger. Paint trumps marker.
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8. Next came blocking out Ullin's form and putting a defined outline in place with paint. Below you can see the result lit from the reverse side of the painting, the side the Yew gets painted onto.
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9. This is the front of the painting. I added just a bit of water to the acrylics I used for the Yew, wanting to be sure it would saturate through to the front of the fabric - which it did beautifully, with the blocking holding its place nicely. Below is Ullin's face surrounded by the Yew foliage. That's a shadow on the painting; he isn't actually part grey. I added touches of foliage here and there on the front side to increase the illusion of him being in or a part of the tree.
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10. And so the painting of the figures begins ...
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11. Once I got a halfway decent photo of the painting I took it into one of the programs I use to fiddle with photos and gave it a solid blue background. If you've got a copy of Mamm of Perth with this solid blue background, it's one of the first ones out of the chute.
Here's the final cover. Changed the background to one of my own photos and added the Circles of Dunnottar.
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