Painting Post

Sunil, 'Irrawaddy', 82" X 70", Oil on unstretched canvas, 2008

It has been a while since I have done an oil painting. The long weekend over Labor day offered me an opportunity to finish a painting that I was planning over the last couple of months. This painting is representative of tribals from the Lower Irrawady delta that was recently flooded.

The monochrome painting was done in burnt umber. Please note that I took the liberty of digitally adjusted the image in the middle to darken splotches where the camera flash distorted the actual dark brown color underneath. Which also brings to mind that one of these days, I need to take up all of these canvases and have them photographed in natural light. Not too sure when that is going to happen. As is usual, I completed the painting by tying ends of a 6 ft X 8 ft unstretched canvas to overhead rafters in the basement using the concrete retaining walls as a vertical ‘easel’ support. Crude, but it works under the circumstances. As always, I used paint directly from the tube without any intervening linseed oil.