The difference between what I have here and the way it looked in the previous post took me about three hours- and I don't suppose many people can tell the difference between the two! I spent a lot of time reworking the right hand of the figure on the left and trying to get just the right slouch.

I worked on this yesterday, developing the figure on the left.

This is an unfinished study of one of the still lifes on the ground plane in the front of the painting. I bought a huge (and expensive) pile of vegetables and set up the still life on the floor of my studio. It was very weird to paint somthing so far below eye level. It's difficult to paint a still life with fresh produce. The beet greens, which looked incredibly exciting when I first set them up, wilted in about two minutes; I had to keep spraying water on the turnips to keep the color from fading and after about two days they started to sprout. It took me a week to do this much and by then everything but the broccoli and potatoes had wilted. I started teaching a landscape class, but kept the still life set up hoping I would get back to it. When even the broccoli turned yellow I took it down and marked where it had been with masking tape (still life R.I.P.) so I could try to set it up again later. I like what I have though: it has the right movement and flow and the turnips look like firm breasts.

This is the oil study for the composition. I wish I had started this blog 3 months ago when I started this study and recorded all of its stages. It began with just colorful abstract washes, then I put in the the soup ladies. I keep adding to it as I work out various sections of the composition through drawings and oil studies.

My friend Gabrielle posed for this study.

I hired someone I know to pose for this study of one of the figures peeling potatoes.

I'm thinking about the rest of the painting, what other groups of figures I want.

This is the first oil sketch. It is unfinished; the green wash is part of the underpainting.

I decided to focus first on the group of three women working on soup, since this idea captured my imagination the most powerfully.

I work from my imagination and, with the aid of a mirror, often use myself as a model. The mirror is particularly useful when I need to study the position of a hand or the details of a pose.