The City of Eagle, Idaho put out a call for eleven artists to paint park benches for a little city park. I got the commission to paint one of them.
This is the painted cardboard maquette I made to show them what I had in mind.
I picked up the actual bench, which weighed as much as a small elephant, but luckily was compact enough to fit in the back of my Subaru. It had been painted with a coat of basic primer…
Mike was out of town so I had a week to get’er done. This is how it went….
First I painted black everywhere except where the eggs were. Then I painted the eggs with quilt patterns inspired by Americana quilt patterns…
And then I painted the nest of twigs that the eggs were laying in.
And I added more detail. It was different to start with black as the background color and build up with the lighter colored “twigs” which I then outlined with the darkest black, and highlighted with the lightest brown…
I also added blue for the sky behind the nest. I wanted people in the park to sit on the eggs like they were the mama eagle. That’s just how I roll.
