Painting A Day, Crabby
“Crabby” 6×6, oil on gessoboard, $75 [button link=”http://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/denise-hopkins/crabby/230580″ type=”big”] Buy Now[/button]
My 24×36 commissioned crab painting is almost finished. It has been quite some time since I’ve painted that large. It felt both free and frustrating. Trying to find the rhythm in my brush strokes. On the small 6×6 panel, each stroke shows, matters. On the larger canvas they get lost in each other.
For today’s painting, I wanted to try to crab on a much smaller scale. And wouldn’t you know, I’d worked out all the kinks on the larger canvas and this smaller one came easily, naturally, nearly effortlessly. There might be something to reversing the paradigm of small study then large studio painting.
I’ve been hesitant to paint crabs. A lot of Louisiana artist do them and do them really well. The most notable is Martin Welch who is an absolutely amazing painter with whom I briefly studied painting at Spring Hill College.
But when the commission came in, I, of course, did not want to turn it down. It’s not as though other people aren’t painting birds. The woman who recently asked me what I did during the day told me that bird paintings were “trendy” right now. Who knew? Feeling like there’s room for me to make my mark on subject matter that’s been around for ages. We will see.
Denise Hopkins
May 10, 2014
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