Project V Day 1: Purple Shell

And so it begins...

 Day One: A purple shell from New Zealand.

One lonely shell on an empty sheet of shitty wood.  That's right...shitty wood.  It's in my budget.  I go to the nearest home improvement store and piss off the employees by asking them to cut enormous sheets of poor quality plywood to specific and odd measurements.  The average cost per 43"x36" panel is just under $8.  By the time I lug the panels to the studio (3rd floor), I've collected at least five blood-producing splinters.  At the moment this is the best support that my life allows and I'm grateful.  

(I know, I know...I'm playing the part of a consumer supporting the manufacturing of a convenient, cheap product at the expense of what I'm sure is ghastly de-forestation methods.  The irony is unforgivable and I'm thinking of ways to remedy this for future work.)  

I make these god-awful shitty pieces of lumber as wonderful as I can.  Sand, fill holes and grooves with spackle, sand, coat of cheap paint, sand, gesso, sand, preliminary drawing, gesso, sand, and now...this panel is pretty dang lovely - smoothed edges, a history of layers, and time to have pondered on the impending composition.