Rover Helping Out...

Illuxcon 7 Student Scholarship

CHARITY ART QUILT

Every year the professional art convention, Illuxcon (initially at Altoona, now at Allentown PA), has a charity fundraiser to raise money for 3-5 scholarships to send art students from around the globe to Illuxcon the following year. One of the ways of raising funds is rather unique. Artists, quite often regular attendees and exhibitors of Illuxcon create small paintings that become a part of a displayable personal 'art show' in the form of a specially designed and created QUILT. The artisan who creates this mini 'art show' is LizAnn Lizotte...a longtime active supporter and collector of the art of the fantastic, and supporter of Illuxcon. This year, I finally got around to having a go. And this little painting is the result. How could it have been anything other than Rover, my usual good will ambassador in paint... 

First up is the design drawing. At first, my idea was to be a simple one...like one of my Rover snapshots of previous efforts. However, like most Rover paintings, they take on a life of their own.

 I gessoed the pre-washed squares of linen supplied by LizAnn, both sides to seal the fabric for oil paint. Then I bonded the primed linen to a piece of white Foamcore board with art tape and started to paint. However, the cloth wasn't completely sealed and seemed to suck up the paint as soon as it was applied. It wasn't a very forgiving surface to paint on...as probably many of my artist predecessors have found out. Still, I persevered and a nice little painting was starting to come together. Here is my easel with all of the initial references pinned all over the place.

Here's a bit closer view of the painting...

In this view, you can easily see the pencil lines on the linen. I did trace the design down from a photocopy of the drawing...but found I had to redraw a lot of it actually on the linen to make it sharper and easier to see when first coats of paint were applied.

A whole session was devoted to painting Rover. Every spot and highlight had to be in the right place.

Here's a closeup of Rover completed. The bird was always going to be painted last, but Rover is the anchor of the piece and contained a lot of detail. I suppose I should be used to painting him now. 

See how the references have changed for this part of the painting. Bird details only since I have finished Rover. Rover's reference photo is actually behind the painting, since I frequently picked up the linen topped board and turn it about to get a good angle to apply paint. The painting surface is actually 6x6", while the whole board was only 8" square...easy to get a grasp on.

Here is the finished painting...FALL FRIENDS. Signed, too. Once the paint is completely dry, I'll apply several spray coats of Kamar Varnish. Once those are dry, I'll pack up my little painting and send it off to LizAnn to stitched into the Illuxcon Quilt. I can't wait to see how it looks in situ.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by,

See you next time for a new rocket or even some experimental figure studies...

Cheers,

Marianne