Bitter, and Corporal Works of Mercy

I'm still painting along on Bitter. Worked on the big sugar bowl yesterday. If you look closely you can see a falling lump of sugar. Think I will add one more cube teetering on the rim.

Now back to doing large to-scale drawings for the next series. I've done the principle photography for the series, based on the Catholic church's seven corporal works of mercy; shelter the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick, minister to prisoners, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and bury the dead.

Here's my plan; Cavalier dogs plus one prop. Each CWOM per 24 x 30" canvas. Dogs will be nearly life size, the props will be cropped and in a corner.

I've taken hundreds of photos over the last few days. I winnowed them down to 14-18 per category, and have made myself a kind of contact sheet. I've been picking out the elements that work best for each.

I'm going at this from a new direction technically - instead of transferring the image by grid from the photo to the canvas, I'm going to project the photo, draw the outline and a few other elements with pencil, and then finish the sketch working directly from the photo. Once I'm satisfied with that, I'll start painting.

I plan to do a ambiguous neutral colored background. The supporting surface is going to be simple and stylized, though I haven't figured out exactly how that is going to work. The table tops I used are light maple color.

I borrowed a Blenheim yesterday, so it's not all Moochie, my black & tan cavalier. I also got great photos of wolves from my bio-sister that I am going to try to use.