There’s a great scene in the third season of Blackadder in which Blackadder is ranting to Baldrick that Samuel Johnson didn’t like his novel, Edmund, a Butler’s Tale. He concludes his rant by saying, “Everybody has one novel in them, and that was mine,” to which Baldrick replies, pulling a tiny piece of paper out of his pants, “And this is mine. My magnificent octopus.” Blackadder reads it aloud. “Once there was a lovely sausage called Baldrick. The end.”
So here it is, my magnificent octopus.
A bit more than Baldrick’s story, but not quite Edmund, a Butler’s Tale. I am excited to have finished this one. It was my most ambitious effort yet. Thanks for following along.
Corey Aber 
Watching this painting grow has been an inspiration to me. Thanks not only for sticking with it, but talking to all of us along the way. You’re demonstrating how painting is the pouring out of a life. Thanks for letting us participate.
Thank you David! You’ve set a great model on your blog to follow.
Well, I’m touched to hear that. I think it is YOU that is blazing a blog trail at this time for artists, writers, any sort of creative spirits!
Magnificent indeed! Details, shading, the man in the window, the colors, the sky. Congratulations on an octopus worth all the time, study and effort!
Thank you!
I am clapping, Corey! I have really enjoyed following your segments of this painting. It took all that work and time on creating these buildings for me to tell you my favorite part of this is the birds on the wires! However, they would be nothing without the backdrop! I would hang this! …and it is an image I won’t forget. Great painting!
Thank you! I know what you mean about the birds. I feel the same way. I was looking forward to that part for a while. The wires and the birds make the buildings better too. I know Hopper often left out power lines, but I find them to be such an integral part of a place. They speak both to age and modernity. Where I live all the lines are buried, so I always notice and strangely enjoy their presence in other older places where it would have been to much to bury them.