Venus Gets a Dress

Today, I gave Venus a pink cloud gown, painted Mars' trumpet, which you can barely see in this shot, detailed Mercury a bit, also hard to see here. I forgot to take a close up picture because I was talking to one of the other artists at the time -- distracted.

You can see, I roughed in Jupiter (on the rainbow). I still haven't decided on how to handle Saturn. I've got a couple of ideas but not sure which way I'll go with him. I need to go to a music store and look at a saxaphone from different angles.

By the time I get back to this painting after Thanksgiving, it should be dry enough to work on Uranus's waterfall and create the mist for Neptune. I hope so anyway. I used Viridian for her dress and Irridescent White mixed with Titanium White. Those colors may take some time to dry.

All in all, it was a good two days of painting.

Neptune Emerges

I'm having fun now! Got some painting done today. Here is a full size view with Neptune (lower far left panel) filled in. She will have to dry before I can paint the mist around her. Also, this is just the under painting. I'll be building her up along with the others after they are all in the picture.

Tomorrow, I will work on Venus and I'm not sure what else I'll paint at this point, but I'm gallery sitting from 11 to 4, so I'll have plenty of time. I also have another "tangle" painting to finish, so maybe I'll work on that. I also want to add some panels for displaying my paintings in my real studio area at Main Street Art Works.

At the left is a close-up of Neptune playing the flute, Mercury playing a keyboard (not finished), Venus (not finished) singing, and Mars holding a trumpet (not finished) and directing the musicians.

Actual Progress

Two things: I’ve been working on the canvases and I remembered to bring my camera.


In the first picture, I enlarged Jupiter. He’s the planet sliding down the rainbow. After I got these canvases to Main Street Art Works in Hilbert WI, where I’ve moved my studio, I had enough room to stand back to get a good look at everything. I could see that Jupiter (the largest planet) was not large enough.


In the second picture, I began painting the small planets, Mercury and Venus. Then I got curious about Mars and how he’d look with the others, so I got out the red paint and worked on him.

What I’m trying to accomplish in this layout is
1. a subtle Nautilus spiral using the postures of the planets to create the arch of the spiral and
2. preserve their personalities from the original set of individual planet portraits and
3. have them relate to each other as they play music. (What am I, nuts?)


In the third picture, I’ve painted the blue night sky, using almost a whole tube of French Ultramarine. I still have to get Saturn and Pluto in there.

Oh, get this. In today’s Sunday paper, I came across a headline “Pluto discussion at LU”. LU is Lawrence University, a local private liberal arts university in Appleton WI. I get all excited because poor Pluto has been down graded to a dwarf planet, knocking him out of the big 9. I’m thinking I could get some great information. The article begins “Lawrence University astrophysicist Megan Pickett sorts through the controversy surrounding Pluto’s recently down-graded status . . . .” The article is going along just fine until I read “A self-proclaimed ‘Pluto hater’ who has long argued against planetary status for the tiny sphere.” Pluto hater! PLUTO HATER!!!! What kind of talk is that for an astrophysicist? How can smart people be so dumb? What is the point of hating a chunk of ice in the sky? Don’t let me get started on useless uses of negative emotions. But, I digress.

I have plenty of room for Saturn and Pluto on the canvas. I needed to get rid of that large white area in order to see how the layout would change and to see what I need to do next.

Class dismissed.