To Market, To Market…..

Appearances can be deceiving! It appears I’ve not been painting; you certainly haven’t seen any blogs this past week that showed me working. Probably everyone thought I was off playing again. BUT…..A surprise commission has been up on my easel, not to be revealed until the gift is given in a few weeks. Now I’m back out in public, starting a new piece for my show in Santa Fe. To be totally honest, when I woke up I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do! I was gravitating toward something Mediterranean but that was as far as I’d thought. Going through our reference I stumbled across some photos we took at the market in Nice, France.

Those Nice pictures combined with the wonderful little vegetable market photos I’d just taken in Charlotte when visiting Paul and Nancy flooded my heart with melodies of delightful memories. Years ago in Nice, Jack and I were sauntering along in the market when we saw a chef picking through field fresh produce at one of the stands. With cap low on his forehead and cloaked in a red chef’s jacket, he selected his prizes for the day with a slight smile dancing across his face. Jack and I tried to guess what his “Soup du Jour” would be!

As we traveled Jack was the official “Photographer” so I could sketch to my heart’s content. If there was anything that caught my eye he was more than happy to snap lots of photos. I never even thought of asking him to take a picture of “Our private chef”! I thought this would be a fun painting to do and certainly different from my usual Santa Fe doorways. So I’ll just reconstruct it from memory; it’s amazing how clearly I can visualize the scene in my mind. I found this picture from another market we saw in Provence; love the stripes and position of the umbrellas.

I Googled “Chefs in Caps” and came up with this guy.

I like how this man is reaching for a melon, but will have to be careful using him for reference. I’ve got to take the camera distortion into account and compensate for the foreshortening when I draw my chef.

Here’s my sketch! You may click on the image to see it larger. The painting will be 20 inches tall by 24 inches wide. I’ll do it in a gallery wrap style with the image extending over on to the sides of the canvas. We’ll start drawing the plan on the canvas in our next session, hope you’ll come watch. If you would like to receive an email every time I publish a new post please feel free to subscribe to my blog. CLICK THIS LINK and scroll to the upper right side of the page. You will see a heading EMAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS. Just enter your email address and click the button “Sign me up!”  It’s easy. And if you enjoy my blog please CLICK the FaceBook LIKE Button. As we say in Texas, “Much Obliged!

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