The 7th Inning Stretch

We haven't seen an obscured box painting in this parts for quite a while, so the term "7th Inning Stretch", as it applies to this particular process, perhaps merits explanation. T7IS is what I call that moment when the painting is half done--either in horizontals or verticals--and I take all the masking off and just let the magnificence of the thing wash over me. Or not, depending on how pleased I am with what I see.

Here, I think I'm feeling pretty good. So you'll get them in order:

This is what you saw before--just the canvas taped out...



Plus some paint ...



Plus some more paint ...


I'm loving Box 8.

That said, the first set of boxes is now finished (more or less--I reserve the option to continue to fix what needs to be fixed once all is revealed) so we cover everything we've done so far with newspaper. The fun of the obscured box technique is that, for my next trick, I shall try to paint the second set of boxes without the benefit of seeing what's going on with the now-masked, adjacent boxes.

The excitement is rendered all the more acutely when you realize that I have poor short-term memory, so really, I usually have no clue as to what exactly happened before this ...

Here's the masking in place ...



And here, after a while, is how the second set of boxes ends up looking like ...



Then we tear off the paper and tape and we have--voila--The 7th Inning Stretch:



I like a lot about this. Repeating what I said earlier, I am particularly fond of the nipple in Box 8.

After all this down-time (plus my general sense that I'm liking where the painting is going) I'm feeling particularly fired up so I may end up finishing Sets 3 and 4 tomorrow.

Oh, and did I mention that the name of this painting is "Waitress #5 (torso)"? So even though a lot is missing, you can start to piece together the image of a nude female torso with her arms crossed over her lap.

If you're still not getting it, remain calm. It'll become clearer tomorrow night.