This is my third version of this scene, a mixture of a remembered visit through the Marigny with John Whelan 15 years ago and various other sketches and sources from back when I went out to hear music a lot. Here is where I write about the previous efforts. I started this on what for me is a large canvas 36 by 48 with the goal of better creating the band and audience. I drew this out from a combination of memory and a reference photo, just doing the figures. I really enjoyed the initial results and looked to try to hold as close to the original drawing as I could. I used a yellow ochre to block in the figures and a few background colors for start. Another unusual thing for me was starting from the middle and working out. I usually have some version of an “all over” approach when I paint.
One thing I hadn’t fully figured out was the surroundings. Would it be an interior or a scene through windows from the sidewalk? Another was what would be the interior surroundings? I got this started at the beginning of March, just before the coronavirus lockdown began to loom. I put it aside to do some more Bon Secour scenes and a Mardi Gras Indian. I came back and decided to do this as a scene through big picture windows into the club. The trick here was where to divide the scene as there were individual figures I didn’t want to obscure. In the end I settled on a plan that lost just one of the figures I liked.
I decided to suggest a second story balcony. Now I realize I’ll want to do a third version with the upper floors showing. I spent some time working out the figures and the architecture. I was also aiming for an evening scene, so after getting things basically how I wanted them, including dropping out the guitarist on the right, I tried using thinned out pigment to make a glaze of ultramarine blue.
But I wasn’t sure I liked the blackened exterior effect and so I went back and lightened it up some, put in some lines for the far walls, some overhead color lights, and some more figures in the lower right. I also did various other bits and pieces to tighten it up. This is how I got to here. I may be a few steps away from final, but only a few.
The figures on the left side felt weak, in particular the woman at the entrance, and so I reworked this using the green light of absinthe which spilled into other parts of the canvas. I still need to straighten the rail of the lower end of the window frame.
