Day 25. Packard Swan Hood Ornament

Yesterday the Glass Hood Ornament spoke to me. Today it was the Packard Swan Hood Ornament.

While I found the Glass Hood Ornament in a Sarasota museum last year, Bonnie and I came across this shiny, elegant swan design outdoors at the Woodward Dream Cruise in my hometown of Detroit, Michigan in 2008.

Technically we’re in Royal Oak, MI, at the Northwood Shopping Center parking lot at Woodward and 13 Mile Road, which was packed with classic cars from all over the U.S. Fortunately I took a photo of the whole car (on the right below) with a 1949 Packard license plate for the uninformed.

FYI. You can see the local CBS camera crew covering the event, which has grown to be huge. Over 30,000 classic cars from around the US come to cruise Woodward Avenue, bringing a reported 1.5 million people. That’s a lot of potential Dream Cruise paintings, besides the one’s I’ve already done (Classic 1959 Dodge, Mustang, Chevy Hood Ornament).

Many of the cars are lined up with their hoods up so we can check out the engines.

Some cars have the most outrageous colors. Here I am with a chartreuse car that could burnt your retina.

Bonnie chose to stand in from of a purple car since it’s her favorite color.

The Packard I decided to paint has a nice conservative maroon color, like yesterday’s car. It was convenient to do the ornaments back-to-back so I could use the same paper palette two days in a row. And I was in the reflective mindset.

I got off to a very late start, and now I’m up at an ungodly hour writing this post. But it’s more efficient to write while the day is fresh in my mind. My goal was to get the quiet, smooth clouds before dinner. This was a moral victory because clouds tripped me up earlier in the Challenge.

The most critical part of the whole painting was putting in the crisp and straight outlines that define the shape. Mistakes at this point might be unfixable. I admit to feeling a little wobbly today so I was a bit nervous going in. A slip of the hand could turn a graceful swan into an ugly ducking.

You can see here how the reflections preceded the dark colors this time around.

At 1 am I thought I was done, and walked away to start cleaning brushes. When I came back, I decided the reflection on the car was a bit too light and distracting. So I kept going, and decided to pay the price tomorrow by staying up late – but having the satisfaction of knowing this painting was done.

That’s it for car imagery for now. On to something else, which has yet to be determined. I’m going to the Met HD Opera Romeo and Juliet at the local movie theatre, which I have been looking forward to, but it will take over 5 hours out of my day. Perhaps a drawing is in my future.