Texas School Boy, 1942

I've long been intrigued by this photo of a Texas School Boy, c 1942.  Over the long holiday weekend, I decided to try it on a smaller scale.  The actual photo is somewhat different, and has several other boys in it.  I made a couple of sketches and decided to paint the one boy and move him to the left.  This left quite a bit of area to the right with nothing in it.  The original canvas is 9 x 12, but I am going to crop it to 9 x 9 as I have done in this photo.

I used a fair amount of walnut oil medium in the painting, which makes it very glossy.  I was also painting on a canvas that I had gessoed several times in addition to the manufacturer's gesso.  This makes for a hard non-absorbent surface which I am growing to like.  The paint sits on the surface and retains gorgeous color in most cases. The walnut oil drys very slowly, which allows for several sessions over a couple of days of wet blending.  That was helpful.  I will probably continue to develop the overalls a bit, and the windows bug me so I may revisit them as well, but here is the work in progress as of today.

Texas School Boy 1942  (work in progress)  Oil on 9" x 9" canvas panel