Progress

Progress on the deck:

So we moved to our new house in Connecticut back in March and my mother in law moved up here with us. We had a contractor start on a deck for her section of the house and ended up kicking the contractor out. So starting with the framing done, I’ve taken on the deck myself. My biggest challenge has been the rain – it felt like every time I had the energy and time it wanted to rain that day. So it’s been a bit of work here and there as I tried to make progress.

Yesterday I managed to finish off the railing in the dark after an all day session. The deck systems now available definitely make this easier than it would have been in the past, but it’s still a lot of work if you don’t do it all the time. For now, the deck is useful for my mother in law even if she can’t step off into the backyard just yet.

I still have to add steps, the rails for it along with two additional posts, flashing for the base, and a cement pad to anchor the steps. Sadly, the rain has pushed me late into the fall and now the temperature is consistently too low for me to get the cement set. So it won’t be until the spring before I can call it completely done.

Progress on big commuter series painting:

So I thought I’d post some progress photos on a big canvas I’m working on. My commuter series is based on photos I’ve taken of scenery on my commute into Seaport in Boston. Being new to the area I’ve been blown away with some of the things I’ve seen and this is a small portion of those images viewed through my eyes.

The shots below are my work on a 3 ft by 4 ft canvas (I really love working on the bigger canvases.) I made a good start on it before I realize that the background color wasn’t really what I wanted. In the progress of re-working it I found myself using my fingers and hands more than brushes as it takes a lot to get that much paint on a big canvas. Somehow using my fingers just got a look I really liked. So somehow this is going to be my first finger painting since I was in grade school…

I’ve also been experimenting with using painter’s tape to get the sharp lines that I always struggle with. That also allowed me to continue playing around with the finger painting style that I’m really enjoying so far.

I’d have to say that based on my progress so far, I’m really enjoying a little bit of a breakthrough in how I’m approaching this painting. I initially thought I would be spending months on this painting trying to focus on details in going after a more reality based painting. As I’ve thought deeply about this I realize that the reason I don’t have so much detail in my paintings is because I have no patients for it and I prefer to leave things for people to fill in with their own imagination.