beginnings: prejudice and pride

stage #1

stage #2

i have painted a portrait of sitting bull before and in fact was my first sale. i have wanted to do another. there are so many great archival photos of him that are in the public domain. i had a piece of 300# paper that was really a scrap left over from another drawing i did for the workshop with bev jozwiak starting next week. not wanting to waste it (the scrap) i searched for a subject that might fit the shape. the iconic photo of sitting bull seemed to fit the bill. so i drew it out and started in. the composition will be a challenge to make it work with the problems that i have set up for myself. the more i thought about this i decided to do it as sort of a diptych with a corresponding painting of the same size and shape of our good friend george armstrong custer in one of his humbler poses. right now i am thinking of float mounting both with exposed deckle edges in a single double cut matt. the whole thing would be roughly 21" square with the paintings about 15"X6" each. we'll see.

stage #3

here are the stages to date on the sitting bull painting. i am not sure i like the "solution" to the the composition problem yet. it is still light enough in value that i can obscure or lift it out if in the final analysis it was a bad idea. it may be something more organic and amorphous might be better rather than this geometric "headband" sort of thing.