A friend from Kentucky is letting me borrow a mandolin made around the 1900s. It is an incredible instrument. It's handmade, has multiple inlays of wood and mother of pearl, and handtooled silverwork.

So far the preliminary research on the history of the instrument has taken me to places that I never dreamed of. I ran into an expert on mandolins, Mark Daly, at an art club lecture. He directed me to another gentleman, Wes Cowan, who turned out to be one of the History Dectectives, who then directed me to Ken Farmer who occasionally appears on the Antiques Roadshow.

After finding a charming photo of a girl around the turn of the century playing a mandolin, I've thought to incorporate some of her into the painting. I thought that she might be wearing Victorian boots, did some research on what those looked like, and lo and behold, the leather boots that I own were styled in that manner!

We'll see where this all goes. It's all part of the fun in the journey of creating a painting.

 

Jan. 2010 - As time progressed, I realized that although I loved the history behind the mandolin, I was drawn to it in the first place because of its lovely inlaid work. So I decided to focus on that.

The old photo of the girl with her mandolin will still be used along with other props. A dark burgundy shawl will compliment the golden wood and reflect nicely in the instrument. It is also something that the girl could have owned. An orange squash and Baby's Breath - which also speak of this country girl - help to balance the photo and larger picture behind it. A mirror frames the composition and reflects the mandolin.

After working on setting up the composition of the still life, I began a life-sized charcoal drawing of it on brown paper. This is where I am striving for accuracy in the drawing which is crucial to a good piece. It is not quite done at this point, and I will spend as much time as I need to do the best that I can.

There are many things besides the composition and accuracy of drawing that I am considering at this point including its values, the abstract design of the piece and hard and soft edges.