Final Steps

Today I met Berkshire Athenaeum Director, Ron Latham, at Pasko Frame and Gift Center on North Street in Pittsfield to select the perfect mat and frame treatment for the painting. It should be completed within about 2 weeks. And since I work part time at Pasko's, I'm guessing that I'll also do the framing!

Soon I will be removing the digital frame and various other remnants of the project from the library. I have to say that it was a wonderful experience for me, and I hope others enjoyed it as well.

Painting is Assembled

On Thursday, May 28, I brought my laptop to the library with the files of the scanned image. I use an older version of Photoshop (CS2) which doesn't have the feature that assembles the image pieces automatically, so, I was doing it manually, as I have done with all my other paintings. This was especially difficult trying to morph the 10 different files and I was not having fun. But the upgrades to Photoshop are pretty pricey so I did not see an alternative.

In the midst of this exercise, I was visited by Ann-Marie Harris, a library employee who is involved with some of the technical responsibilities and was interested in seeing this done manually. And she told me something that will save me hours of time in the future and I will be forever grateful.

There is a product also made by Adobe called Elements. It is a very scaled down version of Photoshop at about 1/10 the price; it uses the same files and the latest version of Elements does have this morphing feature, called Panorama Merge. I ordered it that afternoon, had it the next day and the painting was reassembled by Friday night, looking much better than I could ever have done by hand.

Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!

Not Done Yet!

The painting may be completed, however, that doesn’t mean the project is. Fortunately for me I love jig saw puzzles, because the next steps require some skill in that area, plus a LOT of patience.

Scanning
At the end of Day 10, I took the completed painting home in order to scan it. The painting is about 18” x 28”, but the surface on my scanner bed is only 8” x 12”. It is also important to overlap each scanned image by many inches. It required 10 different scans in order to include the entire painting, scanned in at 300 dpi. Each piece is about 25 Mbytes.

Here are the individual pieces that will have to be reassembled. Some of this will be done tomorrow (Day 11) in the library on my laptop so anyone who is interested in the final high tech stage can see it "morphed" before your eyes.

You may ask why should I bother with this tedious process when I have taken a high resolution digital photograph? Good question. The quality of a photo (which has to deal with atmosphere, camera movement, lighting inconsistencies, distortion, etc.) cannot compare to a scan, which is a first generation reproduction without any of the camera issues. And if reproductions are to be enlarged and printed on fine art paper, the difference is amazing. A scan done correctly looks just like an original painting.

Day 10 - Painting is Finished!

Today is Day 10 and the painting is now finished, signed, and dated (year only). It was done entirely in the library, nothing painted at home. The final touches today included lettering “Berkshire Athenaeum” and “Public Library” on the building, doing a little highlighting and deepening of shadows, and adding “Bo”, the Obama’s pup. The painting portion of the project took just under 20 hours; however, some of that time was spent talking to visitors too. I always tried to get myself there early and be set up in order to spend the full 2 hours in place. And, I only got one parking ticket the entire month!

Here is the final photograph of the painting.

Day 9 - Details, details, details

The painting is nearly finished now, still more lettering to do, maybe add a dog to accompany the Obamas (as a number of visitors pointed out to me...."you must have the dog too!"). I removed all the masking and freshened up the trees, adding more foliage and blossoms, and I put more color into the sky. I also pulled out my white gauche (white opaque watercolor) to brighten up a few places. There is always a problem in knowing when to stop...by painting too much one runs the risk of overworking the painting, so I'm going very slowly now.

Day 8

Only 3 more sessions to go, and I think everything is on schedule. Today I removed some of the masking and worked on the sky. Also added shrubs in the foreground, and more of the tiny details. The lettering on the building, book sale sign and street signs will happen very soon. Also cast shadows.

Day 7

Today began the second half of the public portion of this project and it seems to be right on schedule. It's kind of a leisurely pace to paint, which is great because it allows for a lot of interaction with visitors. Many folks saw the article in the Advocate and wanted to tell me. Nice. Also one very sharp lady wanted to tell me that the trees I have been referring to as cherry trees are actually crab apple trees. Oops. Today I fine-tuned some areas and added more details - a few more people added, and I worked on the curbs (my chronic problem). Next I will do the foreground and perhaps remove the masking and very soon I'll tackle the sky. I've been thinking about that too.