Prison Bars and Roses (Scarlet Letter project), painting as of March 8, 2025

Here is my painting as it looked on March 8th, the day I finally began to put brush to canvas. This is for a special event in Salem honoring Nathanial Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter.")  The text is a quotation from the novel, supplied below.*  The imagery I am using comes from a quotation from the novel (see below), with Hawthorne's words  written on prison bars, and wild rose branches seen through the bars, suggesting the famous letter A that is so important in the novel.  This part of the project is pretty tedious: laying out the lettering to make sure everything will fit.  As I began with my rough pencil sketch on canvas, I was uncertaiin of the color scheme.  I tried a transparent layer of light Paine's grey, just so I could still see the pencil sketch.  As I worked, I made my decision: pale grey for the background (prison bars) and dark grey for the lettering.). I was happy with the contrast and the general placement. 

Here is the quotation from Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter::

"But on one side of the portal and rooted almost at the threshold was a wild rose bush covered, this month of June, with its delicate gems which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom in token that the deep heart of Nature would pity and be kind to him."