![\"With-plate-palette-1300\"](\"http:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/egallery\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/With-plate-palette-1300.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFor this and all, click on the photo to view larger.<\/h6>\n
Here I am posing for a camera on Day 3. For part of the time I used a\u00a0hotel\u00a0dinner plate for my palette.\u00a0But I’m getting ahead.<\/p>\n
The Seed Company had retained the second floor of the 14-floor Sheraton in Arlington, Texas. There they held their week-long meetings for national and international staff. I arrived a day early to stretch canvas and get set up.<\/p>\n Here I am looking pretty formal before applying my first stroke of paint. I’d done the charcoal drawing ahead of time, working from a photoshopped layout that I’d also constructed. I chose to put it on three canvases for the sake of transport when it was finished. We bolted the pieces together on the back.<\/p>\n I used the business end of a short push-broom to get the background going. The\u00a0charcoal drawing was sprayed with a fixative to keep it from disappearing as I applied the\u00a0water-based acrylic\u00a0paint.<\/p>\n Early on a young boy appeared, full of energy and really intrigued with what I was doing. So I gave him a brush and let him go at it. I figured I could always paint\u00a0over it, and who knows,\u00a0he might introduce something inspiring.<\/p>\n At first, it’s just a matter of getting paint on canvas\u00a0. . . and\u00a0just the beginning of over-use of that right arm. All day, every day I worked it, often overhead; I wondered if it would last. When I’d think to switch arms, I found my left totally uncoordinated and useless. Funny how that is.<\/p>\n It’s just a lot of square footage to cover with paint. I’d use different approaches, like that big sponge on the table . . . good for introducing drips.<\/p>\n This is all still on the first day. At this point I’d put a background color in, a foreground (the bodies), and now was working on color for the heads. Note the roll of paper towels, often used as a brush or a wiper. Very handy.<\/p>\n Here\u00a0I was using a wetted and paint-soaked paper towel to “flop” paint onto the canvas. It’s a way of introducing randomness<\/em> that can add to\u00a0the charm.<\/p>\n I tried to keep my colors organized rather than be always hunting. Note the distant “palette table,” borrowed from the hotel kitchen, very handy with wheels. That\u00a0whole canvas was propped up on drop cloth-covered hotel chairs.<\/p>\n Every day I worked into the evening. Most of the time the 400 staff members were occupied in their meetings, but they’d often come by during breaks and observe the progress. Their presence, and the looming due date, kept me working far more hours per day than if I were just at home in the studio. Even with 12-hour days, I felt no lack of energy. Only my arm complained.<\/p>\n That’s my new computer . . . with not a lot of paint on it yet. It’s a great tool, allowing me\u00a0to enlarge and move around the image I was working from.<\/p>\n The point was to not give too much facial detail, as those featured were to be more “representative” than actual. Still, as faces emerged, guests had great fun trying to guess who among their colleagues I was painting.<\/p>\n My thanks go\u00a0to two photographer friends who supplied most of these pictures, John Walton and Gary Coos.\u00a0The little boy’s turquoise strokes are still seen in some of the lower portions, as they were even in the finished product. (I should have had him co-sign the painting.)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n