A start on "M"

Merry Christmas, to those who celebrate! For me, it's just a quiet Thursday. But after weeks of fiddling with my setup, I finally got to work painting my "M" still life, next in the alphabet in my series, "Still Life A-Z". I've been gathering the objects, all starting with the letter M:

Maple syrup
Mask of Poseidon
Map of Mt. Desert Island, Maine
Moss in a Mauve pot
Milk in a Mr. Peanut cup
Macarons
Mammoth
Mirror tray
M&Ms
Melissa’s Monopoly Money
Magenta cloth

I've also just ordered a greeting-card size reproduction of Matisse's "Dance", to go on the wall to the left of the Mask - I may or may not put it in.

Here is a photo of my setup:

I measured out and lightly painted the halves and quarters of my blank 24" x 24" canvas. Looking through my viewfinder (a very well-used and much-loved ViewCatcher), I started sketching the composition with thin gray paint. But I was having a lot of trouble - holding the ViewCatcher up and looking through it, my arm was moving a lot, and I had a hard time getting it all on there. So I came up with a hack - I found a rigid piece of plastic (1/2 of a thin box that I kept because I thought it might come in handy some day) and, using a wet-erase marker, I drew a square and divided it into halves and quarters. Then on the other side, I looked through my new view finder and used a dry-erase marker to "trace" what I saw within the square. I preferred doing it this way over working off the photo - the camera lens distorts the image too much. Here's a photo of what I saw through the plastic - I couldn't get it lined up very well to take this picture, but you get the idea:

So now I have something to check against while I'm working. I can see where the objects hit the quarter- and half- marks on my canvas, which keeps me on track.

Then I started putting color down. The hot magenta cloth was the first thing, and I painted one stack of the Monopoly money. I am painting very directly, trying to "nail" the colors as I go. This is as far as I got today:

I think the dark areas on the yellow money are too dark, but I'm going to leave them for now. I'll go over the whole canvas like this, and then revisit areas that need adjustment. I'm expecting to have FUN doing this painting! What a nice way to end the year!