Eddie's Rooster

“Luck blossomed from the first. A dusty Rhode Island red rooster who had wandered too far from his own farmyard crossed the road and Eddie hit him without running too far off the road.”

(John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, chapter 13)

In Steinbeck’s book, the chicken ended up in a pot of soup with “a sack of carrots which had fallen from a vegetable truck, half a dozen onions which had not.” I have put the truck far enough down the road to give him a second chance to leap out of the way.

Merry Christmas!

Working on Perspective

The perspective rules I had known about weren’t allowing the car to look like it was driving downhill. I learned yesterday to raise one of the vanishing points for slanting objects. The proportions seem off a little, but I think I won’t let it bother me in the interest of getting the painting done on time.

I will scale my drawing on the computer to fit the composition, and then trace it onto the watercolor paper to save the step of redrawing it again.

“And then Eddie driving, they backed up over the rise, over the top and turned and headed forward and down past Hatton Fields.”

(John Steinbeck, Cannery Row,chapter 13)

Lee Chong’s Model T

Our final project for watercolor class is supposed to be based on something we’ve read. I’ve chosen a passage from “Cannery Row.” This is a value study for part of the painting. I have been working on redrawing this truck so it has the correct perspective to fit in the final composition.

“The body of the car was so battered that its next owner cut it in two and added a little truck bed.”

(John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, chapter 11)

Completed Again

There were a couple things in this painting that were bothering me too much, so I made a couple of fixes. The middle line on large pot is now following the curve of the pot better. And I’ve darkened the shadow near the bottom behind the lavender vase.