Calgary Skyline project - 2

There is a deadline to make! I may be in a residency full time during the day and teaching most evenings but that leaves a few weary hours at night to complete the task. I want this, and there is no chance that I will fail once I put my mind to something.  So for a few days I worked without sleep into the wee hours to get it done for the very short timeline.

 Here is the mock up in reverse colours that I used to plan out the piece on  much grander scale.

I charted out the buildings in charcoal on the black primed canvas. The area was measured and outlined in pencil and measures 54 inches in height by 76 3/4 inches in width. The publication will be nine inches tall so the final work will be reduced 6 times.

I used a level and this long stick to maintain accuracy in the horizontal axis and vertical axis.

Here is the back page panels sketched out in charcoal.

The canvas is stretched and stapled right to the drywall.The entire length of the piece took up the majority of my studio wall.

I set up some time lapse photography of me working the first run, here is a still form that series. As you can see the letters are large enough to read, I'm working from a print out of a list with 1700+ names on it, checking them off one by one.

After this night of work, I realized that at this scale of text there would be no way to fit all the names on the piece. I sat back and looked for a while, sucked it up...... I got brave, and painted over it!  This starting occurs when you are doing something you've never done before. I wanted it to turn awesome so it had to be done! Time was ticking away.