Wet Paint – Process

After the painting of the black bears I started mounting the canvas on a board for the drawing and underpainting phase.  It makes it much easier to draw on a flat surface and not worry about constantly pressing on the stretched canvas.  I set up a table next to my easel, or more importantly, next to my sound system.  As the initial drawing can take a week or more, drawing on a table is less strenuous than at the easel.  After the underpainting dries it is a simple matter to stretch the painting and continue with the final layers.  The photo above shows the top left section of the current painting.  When I cut this piece of canvas (actually, hybrid-linen) I made sure to have excess for stretching.  It was going to be 30 x 36, but that wasn’t large enough to get the the foreground I wanted.  Since it wasn’t stretched and I had enough excess I was able to add three inches top to bottom.  And another inch left to right.