Supermarket Preacher

I didn't go in to the Studio today, mostly dealing with work around the house and Mother's Day stuff, but I got a little art done. I did my usual Sunday morning shopping, and while getting a box of cereal, remembered that I was thinking about that aisle as a location for the next supermarket print. So I did a quick sketch of the aisle, looking toward the back of the store, on the handiest piece of paper I could find, a receipt in my pocket from yesterday's flower shopping. When I did the first 8 prints in the series, I actually brought the blocks of wood into a supermarket where a co-worker had a part time job, and did sketches of architecture and store fixtures. I'd sit the block in the toddler seat of a shopping cart and draw. And if anyone questioned what I was doing, I could just send them to my friend the shift manager. But after that, I would do little sketches like the one on the receipt, and apply what I learned doing all the previous prints to fill in the spaces. Figures and other details would be added later.

It may be a while before I get to doing the block drawing itself, so while it was all still fresh in my mind, I did a more detailed drawing of the scene in a spare sketchbook. This isn't necessarily final, but it's a good starting point. I like the piece of the curved roof overhead- it's part of the actual store architecture, but it also could be reminiscent of church architecture, say a barrel vault over the nave of a cathedral. A good association for a religious themed image. I'm assuming that a preacher type will be in the aisle, though I don't know what the figure will be doing yet, and I haven't thought about other figures yet. No hurry.

By the way, although many of the 20 prints done so far in this series are set in this particular supermarket, the large curved roof usually isn't shown, mostly because the selected view didn't show the roof overhead. But it did make it into one previous print, Scenes from the Grand Opening #15 (bottom photo), where we see it adjacent to the front window.