Garth, thank you so much. I agree, we have to get Allan over here for a visit! Also, I'm embarrassed because I never asked you how the Union League portrait delivery went. I'll check to see if you posted anything.
Chris, you are so nice to say these things! We can be honorary cousins in art. I learn just as much from you, believe me!
Mari, thank you, too! I really like your use of the word blackboard to describe the background. That really is the effect I wanted. I was thinking of concepts not (yet) realized, and of drawing boards, but I really was aiming for a kind of chalk-on-board effect.
The interplay of 3-d model and background was a lot of fun. It was really trial and error. I had a really definite picture in my mind of the hanging model and how much of it I wanted to include in the painting. I wanted the portrait to go up much higher than the top of my mother's head to emphasize her small size and the large scale of her ideas.
I had an elevation drawing of the city tower and two or three photos of the tower model. I liked the idea of challenging myself to draw the tower model in perspective and still make it look "flat" compared to the actual 3-d hanging model! In the portrait, the viewer's eye level is a little above my mother's head. I chose the photo of the tower whose perspective angle would correspond to the perspective of the rest of the painting when drawn at a certain size, i.e., viewing the middle of the tower straight-on, looking up at the top and down at the base. ( I had to sketch it in several times before I got it the right size. I wanted the base of the tower model to be a continuation of the floor plane, but transitioning from real to conceptual at a nebulous point. These were my intended goals and I hope I accomplished them to some extent. I hope my explanation makes sense. If not, looking at the WIP might shed a little light on this. Anyway, it was fun to do but I had a few nervewracking times when I wiped the whole background out and wasn't sure it was going to work.
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