Day Thirteen: "Murder Of Crows"

Day Thirteen... Always an ominous number, though personally I've always had my worst luck the day after the Thirteenth.  I recall that Saturday the Fourteenth when I was about 10, when in the midst of a ferocious acorn throwing war (harmless enough right?) I got smacked in the face with a coke can (before they were aluminum) and got a few stitches in my upper lip. Hence the life long mustache!!

Enough drama.  Life always has it's little humps to get through, over and around, and like water finding it's own level, things just manage somehow to get where they are going.

Like it or not.

Taking a moment to look at what I've got going so far with the painting.  I like the overall color-palate developing (that's the combination of built-up color, over the underpainting).  It is deepening into a muted-glowing-gray, mystical, moody scene. I also like the black of the crows (a combination of indigo, dioxazine purple, ultramarine, paynes gray and vandyke brown. With some highlights of kings blue, mineral violet and celadon).  I'm not as happy with the fabric or the white crow (he's going to be much more albino-y).  And I really need to work on the space as defined by the fencing.  But hey, it's a start!

So the work at this point is to place all the components of the composition, define their shapes, and make clear their activity or purpose in the story I am trying to tell.

Overall, I want to design the space by some specific choices I have made for this painting.  I do not want any of the elements to extent out side the canvas edge.  Because of the square shape of the canvas I want a circular motion to the composition (circles tend to work best in squares).  With this  circular motion I want to be true to my original sketch of the three figures AND the abstracted layout sketch from day nine.  I'm not saying I've achieved any of these goals as yet, they are goals and as such I may succeed or I may fail.  I guess that is why they call an artist's work their "Practice", much like a doctor's work is called a "Practice" (though I'm still uncomfortable describing what I do as "Practice"... it just sounds so removed and remote.
Wow, they're right!).

One good point to remember at this stage of painting is that no part of what's been done is too precious.  Don't sacrifice the composition for a little dreamy-delicious spot of brushwork.  I was really enamored with some areas of the background that had to be sacrificed with moving the foreground crows and developing the negative space between them.  I think the resulting activity is a better choice.

From here it only gets better!

Paint well...