Stre-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-etch

by Cooper on 5/14/2010 11:36:07 AM2 Comments

Greetings,

Welcome to the Cooper studio on a splendid Friday morning in Jefferson, Iowa. I will probably be giving in to the "must go dig in the garden" urge here shortly.

But first, do you remember a few days ago, when I told you about "junk day" (click on the red) in Jefferson? I ended up with two canvas stretchers in the freebie category. One of them has moved on to the completed painting category!

However! First you need the facts. These two stretchers are a dimension I have never used before. 16 x 42 inches. That's a whole lot of panorama, trust me. We've all used the phrase "think outside the box" in referring to thinking more expansive thoughts, in hopes of stretching to new levels of introspect. Wow. This was the studio version of painting outside the box. What an adventure. It took some massive cropping of a few photo references, and what I found that did was help me isolate the big shapes. Yes, I know, that's something all painters were taught to do way back in their infancy, but getting it done on a regular basis is another matter entirely. In this case, all those cafe umbrellas suddenly merged into one. I took my drawing of that over to the easel and painted those umbrellas as one big long red streak right across the top of the canvas. Don't you just love when it all becomes crystal clear?!! The whole painting was pretty dang easy after that big moment.

Oh, yeah, back to the title: stre-e-e-e-e-etch. Would I have had that big moment if I hadn't had to stretch? Think (er,paint) outside the box? Would I have eventually tried that extreme a canvas dimension just for the heck of it? Maybe. But I would venture that having the opportunity, via a freebie, literally thrown at my feet, hurried the process on.

Stretching. Something we should probably all do more of. Oh, and here's the painting:

Sidewalk Table, Brits, an acrylic painting on a panoramic 16 x 42 inch canvas. Thanks for stopping by.

Later, Cooper

2 Responses to Stre-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-etch

	Marian Fortunati via karencooperpaintings.com	21 months ago
	No matter what I know I should do or see ... it is ALWAYS a stretch to put knowledge into action. This is beautiful!!

	pam via karencooperpaintings.com	20 months ago
	I will be back when I have more time, but I wanted to tell you that I love your blocks of colors. I like all the action in your paintings. Alot of artists are afraid to paint people. You do it so well.

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