Post 37: Getting Medium on "Mugshots" Lower Field

    I am always amazed at the time it takes to do the medium coat, not to brush it on, but to make it fairly smooth and thin so the colors glow. I had a hard time today with this one: may be trying to make it too thin, I kept scraping down to the white gesso, cussing myself every time, and had to make a lot of "patches".
    Before I finish the Upper Blue Field, I want to think about it, and print most of the images, so I raised the painting and clamped it to the table":

     As with the previous painting, the mockup was only a small image, so I have to first finalize the images that I will use, and find them large enough to print at 300 DPI's. In the process, I end up making some changes to the original idea. I looked for images of old slates, both from police departments and schools, and found one I liked a lot:

      I also decided to look for something better than the old Dollar Bill to tape to the "wall", something more meaninfulwithin the painting. I looked at a lot of old mugshots. There is a great collection on the Internet of Australian mugshots from the teens and 20's, such as this great one:

    I also found a high quality "Test Mugshot" of the inventor of the mugshot, famous French forensic precursor and theorist Alphonse Bertillon. He was the inspiration for a lot of Sherlock Holmes investigative "coup de force":

    I started thinking of taping several mugshots to the wall, and he belongs there , but I needed more meaninful shots. The piece is about the decriminalisation of drugs, which I favor, and the overcrowding of prisons with minor offencers (courtesy of the 3 times you are out Reagan laws) that should never have been locked up in the first place...
    I found a great one of a yound David Bowie busted for possession of Marijuana in 1976:

   Then, with the recent John Lewis vs Donald Trump dispute in the news, a mugshot of him from a 1962 arrest in Nashville re appeared: