This Mustang oil painting was inspired by the Detroit Woodward Dream Cruise, and by high school memories of all those cool Mustangs racing down Woodward on a Saturday night. The Ford Mustang car, now in its sixth generation, is a true classic – with a capital “C’. I hope you weren’t expecting to see a painting of the whole car…
Day 18. “Mustang” by Beverly Shipko, Oil painting on cradled panel, 5 x 7 inches.
Originally the plan was to paint this yesterday, following on the wings of the Chevy Phoenix Vintage Hood Ornament from Day 16. However, it was a busy day, and I knew I had to start this iconic logo in the morning, when I was fresh, since it would take the whole day to capture the reflections with precision. There wasn’t much room for error with this daily painting, so I needed a day without interruptions. And the weather was so awful here in New York that I knew that was the perfect day.
Having the Day 16 hood ornament painting under my belt helped me approach this more complex image with confidence. I was very happy with the metallic rendering of the phoenix. When I look at the painting, I think how much I like it and not about fixing anything (a welcome change). From that painting, I developed some techniques that I knew would be helpful here (think Q-tips for brushes).
This sketch was done two days ago. So I was ready to paint after breakfast.
I started by applying a thin wash of red acrylic using wet paper towel (no pink allowed with this masculine color palette!). Then I painted the black middle stripe in the background, but not the red. I wanted to leave the bottom part of the panel blank so I could rest my pinkie on it to brace my hand. Inevitably, I do that without intending to, and nick the paint. Red is a particularly unforgiving color when it’s nicked, and it bleeds easily into other colors, which is hard to undo without letting the paint dry overnight.
In the middle of the day, I noticed something new. The blue sky was reflecting on the horse, as you can see above. It’s funny how long you can look at something and never really see it. So I mixed a good blue that worked and put it on sparingly.
Now it was time to decide on the predominant red color for the background since it was reflecting into the metallic logo. I found the perfect cadmium red in my paint box.
The next step was to add in the red reflections in the horse, before moving on to the faint reflection on red of the mustang underneath. I worked slowly and deliberately, using separate brushes for each color, and wiping the brush after each stroke. Now you can understand why it was slow going.
It was an intense day at times, but very satisfying from all perspectives, everything from the process to the result. When looked at my pictures for the day, I was surprised to see how closely the painting resembled the original photo.
The only thing I was having trouble with was photographing this piece at night. The black reflected every little brush mark creating unwanted hotspots. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Reluctantly, I think this is my last Dream Cruise painting for this challenge, although it’s tempting to keep going. There are other images that I want to try, both food and non-food. I expect to come back to this subject again in the future. Maybe I’ll even include more of a car (anyone up for Bel-Air fins?).
Thanks for stopping by to follow my progress. See you tomorrow!
