Rick's Cafe Americain -stage 5

 Still throwing some colour around and seeing what works and what doesn't. 

New colours used: Ultramarine Violet, Cobalt Teal, Cadmium Red and Naples Yellow.

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 4

 I have roughed in some colour based around the original Midjourney piece but having second thoughts so have stopped here and will decide what to do next over tomorrow morning's breakfast coffee.

Colours used: Phthalocyanine Blue, Phthalocyanine Green, Permanent Orange, Yellow Lake Deep, Cadmium Yellow Light and Zinc White.

IX!

 Approaching with scary rapidity is IX being held in Reading PA from the 19th to the 23rd of October. I am now in the middle of packing up the paintings for shipment to the USA later this week by FedEx. I had nine framed up and then Pat Wilshire contacted me to ask if I wished to have a larger space on the ground floor due to a couple of artists cancelling for health reasons so I have sorted out some more which I will hang unframed as there is not enough time to get them framed. I am also hoping to take the painting that I am working on now, "Rick's Cafe Americain" with me which I will pack in my luggage as it is quite small.

Despite my current panic I am looking forward to meeting up with my fellow artists and collectors and indeed friends over there in the USA. There is one other Brit attending to my knowledge, Ralph Horsley as two other Brit friends have had to cancel.

I am thinking of sending the boxes on separate days as I feel it might be slightly safer but still worried about the Customs delays that have dogged all my recent attempts at taking paintings to the USA.

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 3

 I decided that I would just finish off the tonal underpainting today including putting in the market stall at bottom right and a couple more figures - I think it still may need a few more figures yet.

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 2

 

This is the initial tonal underpainting which I will work on more tomorrow as well as starting on the sky with some colour. I used my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and brush for the underpainting.

I have been looking at it this afternoon and realised it's looking too spacious at the moment; a casbah/medina would be a lot more crowded and enclosed so I am going to introduce the front of a market stall at bottom right with a few more people walking around too. This is compositionally better as well as it needed something in that corner anyway.

I'll worry about how I'm going to do the neon lettering later on...

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 1

 I have had this idea on the back burner for a while now and finally decided to go for it as I thought it would be a nice one to show at IX as it is different to the others (in some ways) and a lot of people love this film including me. It is of course the Bogart/Bergman film "Casablanca". The idea occurred a while ago when I was in the middle of painting quite a few Orientalist pictures of busy souks and medinas and it suddenly dawned on me that I could kind of bring them up to date (well 1942) with a painting of Rick's Cafe Americain as though it really was in the medina of Casablanca. I want to make it moody and somehow have a feel of a still from the film but in colour. I am not looking forward to painting the neon lettering in perspective but hey ho it has to be there otherwise there is no point to the painting.

This stage is the basic "drawing up" with a small bristle brush using my usual Burnt Sienna/Dioxazine Purple mix thinned with Liquin. I am going to attempt to put in the lettering tomorrow when the paint is dry with a sanguine chalk pencil as I will have more control than a brush. I will also put in some figures as I do the tonal underpainting with the same paint mix.

I am including below the Midjourney piece that is the basis of the painting although as you can see it is considerably changed. I am also showing a film still of the set in the movie.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

Midjourney

Film Still

The Pharoah's Barge

 Another small painting heading for IX later this month ( I'm going to have to take a couple of small ones with me in my luggage as I have to send the main batch off pretty soon) this one is based on an Ancient Egyptian theme which I don't think I've painted before. This one somehow came out of the last painting "Flight From Atlantis" but I can't pinpoint why..

It is not based on a Midjourney piece this time and is kind of based around a memory of the amazing light in Egypt in the late afternoon when I was there in 1984. I wanted to try and get that incredibly warm light that happened around 5-6 in the afternoon and for some reason decided to paint some Ancient Egyptian buildings with a boat going by on the Nile. It is kind of meant to be Karnak but as it is a Fantasy painting after all, I have incorporated elements of buildings from a few different sites along with quite a lot of invented detail too. The barge is based on the one used in the Taylor/Burton film "Cleopatra". I was also trying to get some of the feel of Edwin Weeks' Orientalist paintings too but only partially got it, he was so good....

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting including the colours I used in previous posts on this blog.