Blake Gopnik trashes official portraits in Washington Post article

[Thomas Nash]

I used a big light fixture to emulate the sun. It doesn't show in the picture but you can see the light pole. The north window light is too soft to get the effect I needed for this painting. I don't always do things the same way. I do what I have to do once I design the painting in my head.

[Michele Rushworth]

Thanks for showing us parts of your process. It's fascinating!

[Thomas Nash]

This will give you some idea of what the painting looks like.

[Thomas Nash]

This gives you some reference point for the scale of things. My wife took this picture from down in front of the Capitol while I painted the colors of the Mall. Most people don't see the bird net from a distance, but it is a big distraction when you are right behind it trying to look out at the Mall.

[Thomas Nash]

My wife snapped this wide angled picture when I was in the very early stages of trying to get familiar with the Mall and capture it's colors. In the three days I spent there I found I liked it better when the sun was shining more clearly. I was already pretty sure I wanted to paint the column on the right side of the painting but it didn't line up the way I needed, in order to see both it and the view of the Washington Monument at the angle I wanted.

I sometimes keep my brushes behind the painting where you might otherwise store another canvas. I have a box for wet canvases. You can see the brush tops sticking up. It's divided into three parts so that the brushes don't all run together if they have wet paint on them. The middle is not as deep so I can put short brushes there and they don't fall down. I wasn't using any real short handled brushes at this early stage. The canvas is toned grey. I sometimes work on toned, sometimes on white. I used a bit of charcoal to rough it in. There's not much to see of the painting, just thought some people might find the set up interesting.

[Thomas Nash]

One of my biggest challenges was that the positions of the various elements did not cooperate to make the painting I envisioned in my head. The Washington Monument for one thing, is a very tall and insistent structure that would've been too much of a distraction had I not "worked with it a bit". Have you ever painted someone who owned a really large dog and tried to find a way to not have it hog the picture?

The pattern of the railing didn't line up in an interesting way and the height of the top bar and the way it would intersect the view down below was unfortunate. I could write a book on the artifice and liberties employed to make the painting that the W.P. critic was certain was just a copy of a photo.

Here I'm just sketching and figuring, trying to find a way to make my idea work out. The easel is one of those light weight aluminum ones with the telescoping legs.

[Thomas Nash]

I will have to scan some other things to show you more. There is a pattern that runs through the painting that echoes a diagram the Speaker used to illustrate a point in a paper he wrote about the future. I will share that with you when I can.

[Kimber Scott]

traditionalism in art and proclaimed themselves the "avant garde." They, however, have lost claim to the title as the avant garde can no longer be avant garde if everybody is doing it. It is the traditionalist who has become the "new avant garde." It is the traditionalist who must rage against the machine. Vive la difference!

Let Gopnik go play with Hockney and watch them fade into history never to be seen, or heard from, again - except maybe as a "See how ridiculous things got... the emperor had no clothes" footnote in a future art history class.