Supermarket Fireworks part 7

After taking a day off to recover from this week's classes and to mow the lawn, it was time to go back to the Studio.  On the other hand, we are entering Labor Day Weekend, and beach towns are the last place I want to be on summer holiday weekends.  Still, I had business to take care of.  After taking care of some other errands, I got up to Ocean Grove shortly past noon

Nichole wasn't in the office, but then I ran into her in the 1st floor hallway, so we could exchange information.   Gave her an update on the conclusion of the summer classes.   I had put information into the various e-mails I had sent her during the week, but I gave it to her in person today, bringing up a few concerns that had occurred to me related to the drop in classes next month, and more feedback from my August students.  We will deal with details in a few weeks.  Also an update on the ongoing basement hallway light problem, so I could tell the guy who replaced our bulb on Monday that by Wednesday it was not working again.  (checked other switches in the hallway and our bulb is the only one malfunctioning- and with no idea if it's the bulb, the switch, the fixture, or the wiring, or even something else, they have a project to deal with.  But not today- no one wanted to hang around too long in that town, so I picked up my latest supermarket block to take home.  Still in the pencil drawing phase, and that I can do in my apartment. away from tourist traffic.

Advanced the piece a little bit in the afternoon. The one part of the block where I had done the least work was the far left side, the bakery section, but I knew all along what I wanted to do.  In the front of the counter is that Jane cake with the sparklers, and at home I could easily pull up the photo of the inspirational cake (from this very blog) to sketch it.   However, for the assortment of other cakes on display, I used an old pro as my resource- Wayne Thiebaud.  I became familiar with Thiebaud's paintings back in my undergrad years, where my painting professor was a big fan and showed slides of his work in class a lot.  I show examples of Thiebaud's work to my students now, as we deal with color.  Thiebaud is sometimes grouped with Pop Art. which he disagreed with, but then Degas didn't like being grouped with Impressionists despite the obvious common ground.  Theibaud dealt with a wide variety of subjects (always thought his vertigo inducing views of San Francisco streets were fantastical, until I visited out there and saw they really looked just as he painted them) but he was always seeking to paint objects realistically. Did figures and such as well, but he's best known for images of food objects- sandwiches, bowls of soup, and cakes, with thick paint in bold colors, giving the objects almost a feeling of existing.  (retired from teaching in the 1970's, and had a retrospective exhibition in his native California a few years ago, but in his 90's he still enjoys playing tennis almost daily) When I need to see images of cakes, he's the man I turn to.   Have a good hardcover book, a catalog from a 90's retrospective, and cakes and pies are well represented.  Didn't copy his baked goods directly, but used them to get ideas of how to visualize cakes.  (my small simplified black and white images couldn't capture his thick colorful painted images anyway) I roughed in a bakery counter's worth of cakes and pies, and will clean up the details later.