The Process: Day 6 and 7

I am finally sick of it. It would have been so much easier, and probably more fun, and certainly less stressful, to bang out one of my animal and plant multi-layered bright paintings. I cannot believe how tired I am tonight. I literally rolled out of bed and started working and knocked off at 8:30 pm. Im still not finished but any major work is over and it is all finessing and tightening up now. Win the prize? I hope I can even get in the show. I had some technical problems that set me way back. Am I sorry I tried to paint Flannery? No, and I am looking forward to another large painting of somebody -maybe Harper Lee - in the near future. So. What went wrong?

When we left off on day 5 I had not yet painted the feathers on the peacock tail. I did, and I liked them okay but they were too bright and too strong for the rest of the painting. I needed to take the brightness of it down and added and overlay of sheer circles and texture with a spray of droplets. I liked it better, but realized this evening as I knocked off, I need to curve that tail even further toward the right of of the board.

Fittingly, it was putting in the devils that started my troubles. I deepened the background color and free painted these creatures, drawing heavily from the Bosch style of demons: 

It looked fine until I began to paint layers of sheer color over them with the idea being that eventually the devils would be taken down to a very subtle presence. But it started to rain and the paint didnt dry as fast as I was used to and when I laid the next layer down, the paint stuck to the dried areas but lifted off the paint where it was wet leaving a very unattractive mottled surface. It was so humid everything was sticky and difficult to work with. I kept trying to work around the situation but could not get the paint to do what I wanted. I dont know that much about acrylic to begin with. As an illustrator, my medium was gouache which is very different. But you cannot paint large pieces with gouache. Eventually the background got too dark and it looked horrible.

See how uneven and smeary the color looks? no matter how much I tried to match it or fill surrounding areas to even it out, the paint wouldnt stick or it would be too dark or not match. I was extremely frustrated and sat before it trying to decide what to do. Here is a close-up of the mottled background:

This is not acceptable. Not only should a painting be an interesting image, but the surface should be a thing of beauty and in some way indicate proficiency with the material. I failed on this part and made a hard decision. I scrubbed the surface with nail polish remover because it contains acetone. I was able to get most of the sticky layers off but was left with a horrific surface but at least it was able to accept paint.

This morning I woke up and scrubbed the surface again with soap and water and tried to paint around the figures and bring the background into something, if not even, at least pleasing. It didn't work and I realized I would have to cut my losses and gesso the background back to the beginning. So I lost at least a half day of work.

I tried again to work in the devils and demons and gave up after 2 hours. Then I tried to make a pattern instead by laying branches of an ash tree on the background and spray painting yellow. I waited for it to dry and it never did. Instead, it made like a powdery surface that I could just wipe off with a rag. It looked pretty though, and had it dried, I couldve layered that (it was sunny and dry today) and had a pretty background. Instead, I had no choice but to paint the background a solid color. I have a little darker tinting on the edges, but not much. Its very flat and I am disappointed.

I worked on Flannery's face, arms, the peacock and tightened up some of the water. I also added the thing on the crutch that LX noticed I left off. 

 Here it is with the flat background. I lost control of this painting. I might *might* try and redeem the background tomorrow. I put in a tree line on the horizon that will need some finessing tomorrow. I can give about a half a day to this painting and then I just have to accept it as it is because I have other things I need to accomplish this week. I am a little disheartened tonight and hope that the little pops of detail will help. It this point, the best thing I can do is go for broke and just have fun with it. I can try some ideas; paint kind of free and loose on top of this. I love the light, the baptismal droplets and Flannery; everything else has problems. I think I have learned a lot for next time, and hope that I get to where I can make acrylic look beautiful. I use it to make my folk art pieces but those are very very different from what I tried to do here.

*sigh* I can just say it was a hard week at work. I will show you the final art tomorrow. Thanks for joining me on this journey!

We interrupt "The Process" for a Garden Report

Harvested this morning: Cherokee Pink tomato, blueberries, Green Zebra tomato, Black Prince tomato, Big Boy tomatoes, yellow (yaller) crookneck squash, green beans, parsley, oregano, jalapenos, red salad scallions (not pictured: the one red potato I dug up to check progress),  sunflower, zinnias and cosmos.

Back late tonight with a final "The Process" post. Have a blessed day everyone!

The Process: Day 5

Somewhere around the year 1995 I did an artist residency in Milledgeville Ga. This was where Flannery went after finding out she had Lupus, and lived on her mothers farm Andalusia. I lived and worked at the John C. Marlor Art Center. While I was there, a symposium of Flannery's works was held at Georgia College which drew people from all over the world. Milledgeville is also the site of the state asylum, so its fitting that Flannery would draw upon weird country people to play out her morality tales of redemption, salvation and grace. I do feel some degree of pressure to present this great author correctly and to have it be worthy of her. 

I thought I might start todays post with a shot of the studio. Its a wreck. Tomorrow I have to rearrange so that I can hang the painting on the wall. I need to look at it from a distance more now. I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked. Koby had a rough day. The dogs were restless so we played in the creek; I threw sticks for them and they chased each other until Koby ran through a yellow jacket nest. Im ashamed to say it was funny to see the moves she made; I slapped all the ones still stuck to her down. July and August are horrific here. It is buggy hot and humid.

First thing I did was dry brush the water and add the crutches. I paint them fully as if they are going to show and then as I worked on the water they became less clear. I am very happy with how they look now; not so clear but more of a suggestion.

I am not entirely happy with the water and will have to work on it yet again. Im almost embarrassed to say how much time I put into it and not be fully satisfied. Self doubt has started to creep in...typical in any piece that is a stretch. I couldve done one of my layered pieces that is bright and fun. This is a piece that is about something more than a decoration so it is harder.  But I do love being with Flannery every day!

Another awkward stage. I worked on the arms and will need to redo the peacock feather under the hands. Here you can see how the crutches look in the water. I am very happy with that. The photo doesnt show the water well - that worries me a little as I have to submit photos to get in the show. I will work on it some tomorrow. I also touched up Flannery's face a little tonight...just took down the shadow on her chin and I think it softened her face a bit.

Layered peacock feathers. I will tighten them up a bit later and make some of them bright areas of light for  contrast. I did a test near the bottom of the painting and it looks good.

This where I left it for the evening. Does it look like much happened? Not really!

Tomorrow: more water work, finish the peacock tail and wing, refine arms, and start the devils. I actually need to finish the devils. Sunday needs to be a day where I can just finesse a painting that is basically finished. Have a terrific weekend everyone. Thanks for tuning in.

The Process: Day 4

If anecdotal science is accepted here, then I say that bee venom is indeed an effective anti-inflammatory and pain killer because I felt great today. No headaches, neck pain or even pain at the site of the stings although that area was itchy. Next time I have severe neck pain, I plan to go harass some bees. I called the fella that built my studio and asked him if he wanted to come over and fix the well, he did, but I had to kill the bees first as he is allergic to them. I went out there with a can of wasp and hornet spray and couldnt pull the trigger. So I got a shovel, picked up the hive and moved them to a hole in a tree about 200 feet away. It worked; there were only a few hanging around this morning when Mike arrived.

Most of my day was spent here. But I think it was a good thing because when I finally got to my painting I saw it with fresh eyes and didnt like some things. I didnt like the peacock's neck. In the first photo of this post look at the neck under the beak. Its a little too thick and I think it makes him look goofy. Now I have tucked that in a bit and he looks more elegant -as he should. You can also see I am beginning to correct that bad hair on the right -it will take layers and layers to overcome that van dyke brown. I should not have used that until I was sure it was correct. You see how rough this painting is when you look at it up close. The last two days are all about refinement, refinement, refinement.

I painted out all the areas of white so there wasn't anymore distraction from its brightness. Some of what is painted is just place holding; a general color that helps me move forward. I work on lots of areas in a day because if I work too much on one thing it can throw off the balance. I like how stylized the God cloud is, and its an indication of what is to come in the water...this painting will become more fantastical each day and then at the very end I will rough it up with strikes of bold hot color on the surface. Highlights are another way to think of that. One thing that was killing me is how the tail of the peacock went in too similar a line with Flannery's dress so I changed it to flow back into the water more and it looks much better. Im not thrilled with the God eye - thats a placeholder. I thought it might be black with fire inside..but it reminded me of how Sauron was portrayed in the Fellowship of the Ring.

Here is the full painting with *some* of the offending areas labeled. 

Today's studio animal is Easter. I caught this photo of her flying up on the painting. 

Here I have fixed the peacock tail. Once I get the water painted and the feathers finished this will make sense. I also covered over Flannery's legs and I think that is fine. I just laid in the underpainting for the dress roughly. Tomorrow I am going to cram school and get in a full rock-breaking day. I will finish the water and the peacock and will definitely have something major to show tomorrow (if something don't break before before then.)

And now, its time to chill with some heirloom Green Zebra tomatoes and Project Runway. See you tomorrow, and I promise that will be a better post. Thanks for joining me on this process!

The Process: Day 3

A few set-backs today. I woke up with a "bad neck" and got started later than I wanted to. I had to medicate which fuzzed me up a bit and caused me to work slower. Then this afternoon I heard a weird sound coming from what I thought was the road. As I walked up my driveway I could tell the sound was coming from my well; it was the sound of forceful water hitting the top of the cover. I turned the pump off, returned to the well and  removed the soggy insulation that I had wrapped around the well head last winter. I discovered, by way of multiple stings, that there was a bee hive buried deep inside the insulation. A nice puffy hand will take your mind off a hurting neck every time  - and I think it may have even healed me because now that I am in for the night - I feel pretty good. Or was it the delightful bath I had buck nekkid in my cool creek that did the trick? Either way, Im ready to relax and review todays painting progress.

I mostly worked on the peacock. The painting is in a very awkward stage right now, and I have written about that before. It is in these times where doubt tends to creep in, but my minds eye has such a clear vision of how this should be that I didnt panic when I had to stop for the day with so many rough areas unresolved. The tail of the peacock is a labor intensive section. I started with black which makes it look too strong for the rest of the painting right now. I will shade that down a bit in some areas, but that background will be critical for the linear work that is the part of the feather thats airy. Somehow Ive got to figure out how I am going to morph the tail into the water...it won't be under the water like Flannery's legs, it will float on top.

Speaking of floating on top, I've decided to have the forearm crutches that Flannery used to do just that. I downloaded a good clean photo of that kind of crutch from a medical supply company for reference. I think it will be tricky to have them in the water and know what you are looking at -I mean, if a viewer is not familiar with Flannery, I still need them to know there are crutches in the water.

I use my computer all day looking up photos of things. You can see a reference image of a peacock on the screen as well as my layabout do nothing Trouter.

Here we have yet another shiftless creature. Both have been in trouble with me today for chasing away the doves from the feeder. You would not believe the grooves in my deck that are from the dogs charging off after doves and squirrels and falling leaves.

Working back to front on the tail, I will refine several times the edges of green and brown and black. The black and white striping of the peacock is a lot like my own hen Vera's feathers. I like the face but its not quite where I want it to be. The body of the peacock is mostly done, it will need finessing at the end but its about right. Once all the turquoise feather lines get painted in that tail and the water is deepened and tricked out the painting will be back in balance.

Here you can see the rough underpainting of Flannery's hands. This is very "illustratory" as human hands are about as big as the face they belong to. Go ahead, try it. Put your hand on your face with the heel on the chin and fingers extended to the hairline. Open your hand and you will see it mostly covers your face. Flannery's head is about 5 times too large for reality -but I like it that way because it emphasizes the container for her incredible brain, her thoughts and her literary gift. This is a device that you see in african art often. I am also reminded of the work of Romare Bearden who in his jazz portraits, emphasized hands because they were important, making the music.

Thinking about Flannery's writing today I arrived at what I am going to do with the background. In the areas outside of the cone of grace, there will be demons and devils. They will be barely perceptible in the end. That's one of the neat things about acrylic painting that could never have happened with gouache, which was the paint I used as an illustrator. I will be able to paint the devils - and paint them fully and well - and then add layers of QNAG (explained in the previous post) until they fade into a pattern only to be recognized upon closer examination. I love the idea of the painting having a life beyond the first look -where things materialize and the content becomes as rich and layered as the surface of the wood.

I remembered today a little room in Barcelona Spain, where the great architect Gaudi slept as he worked on his masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia, the great sand castle cathedral. The little room with a single cot was located in the basement of the cathedral. It got to the point where he didnt even bother to go home at night. The work was all that mattered to him. Sometimes when I am working on a project like this and I have time pressure I feel like I am living in an alternate universe and can identify with Gaudi being so single mindedly focused.

Even though I have the well problem to deal with tomorrow, I hope to have a very productive day and be able to show you some resolution in the tail and water tomorrow night.

Thanks for joining me!

The Process: Day 2

Day 2. Started late around 1 PM and that is not good. The light is best from 10 - 4 and I should never be anywhere else during those hours. But my neck was extra tight so I walked up the mountain and over the other side for an extended 2.5 hour hike. It was good -but oh so humid. I was soaked through when I got back, took a freezing shower, had a salad with my heirloom Green Zebra tomatoes and hit the studio.

I started by adding another background layer of goldens and reds. I lightened the cone of grace that Flannery is standing under. I just needed to get the gist of how that will look so i can figure out the overall color balance. The cone of grace will need several layers to hold the detail of drops that will come later.

I could not live without Golden Fluid Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold; it is the most indispensable color. QNAG adds a warmth to any color it overlays. It will take a lot of paint (a LOT of paint) to get the background where I want it but that can come later. Today I needed to deal with Flannery's face and that was what most of today was about.

I did the classic green shadow underpainting. Frankly, I havent done this since college. This is the kind of thing that can get me panicky and abandon the process, but I worked through it and all the weird awkward stages to follow. Note how the drawing is kind of skewed and asymmetrical. I tend to leave those lines and fix them as I paint; I try not to have the image be too perfect because its this very wrongness that gives a final painting its unique character. (I think)

I painted about 4 layers of different colors to create the flesh tone of her face. You cannot just squeeze out a tube of flesh colored paint and call it a day because it just doesnt have any life to it. I use a mix of flat and slightly shiny paint - it looks weird now but later when I varnish the painting all the layers will "come up" and it will look deep. Rich. Make sense? I mean that you can look down into the painting and see all the layers but it still reads as a fluid surface. See how crooked her eyes are? I'll fix that in a minute. Its hard to see the importance of that halo of lighter yellow until I get her dark hair painted. Right now the whole thing looks pasty and bland. Note how deep into the lines of the Flannery drawing I take the background color. That is critical for nice clean edges. Painting is a discipline where you are always thinking back to front and trying to plan for later by laying a foundation early.

Flannery's hairline is to die for; the illustrator in me loves the lack of ambiguity. You just do not see this kind of hair anymore. I really like how the left (our left) looks - Im going to have to fix that right side but its going to take some real skill to overcome that dark with the light. I used a ruler to measure the distance from hair to shoulder line and its still off. So thats something to be corrected as well.

The face is very rough here but I know that the super refined work is days away. I just need to have her look back at me for the rest of the painting because the connection with her eyes is what every other thing that follows has to sync up with. Literally, the peacock, the pond, the trees, the leg braces, the cloud - all of it must be in service to those eyes.

* describing this process is a challenge*

There is barely enough room for me and the board (40x40) and the paints to fit in here. But both Trout and Koby tend to lay in here all day. Its too hot and humid for them. They mostly lay around in the summer. I took them to the waterfall on the break around 4. Some times the chickens come in too but they have a tendency to fly up and land in paint. I just wave my dry rags around at them and out they go.

I added the eyebrows and that was very important to the look of Flannery. That mouth needs work - not alot though. I couldnt have her smiling a big wide smile so this is the face I am going with. I need her face to look a bit more relaxed and that is going to mean doing something with the smile line shadows. But not much! Too much is too much and letting go is as important a skill as any other aspect of painting. Im happy with the dress detail. I was working from a vague photo so I am sort of guessing here - the vibe is about right and that is good enough.

I thought about my mom while painting this. She was the one that taught me about how the upper lip is darker due to the shadow and that light hits the middle of the lighter lower lip. Its absolutely true. She was a good artist, and drew women's faces beautifully. Most of the day I was trying to figure out how I was going to work in the leg braces that Flannery no longer needs. In my original drawing I thought it might go something like this:

How's this for an impressive preliminary drawing? grherhahahaha! I saw her tossing the braces away and then I noted how damn big a peacock is. You are not going to stand in water holding a bird that heavy in one arm. Not even in my fantasyland. Now I am kind of seeing a Frida Kahloesque device where they might be bound in ribbon or something sort of floating away...we'll see.

This might give you an idea of how large the piece is. It is hard because typically, I spin my paintings around and work from every direction. I paint upside down a lot. Its a great way to work for some reason I can see certain things more correctly that way. But not being able to move the painting around is making it a bit more difficult. By Thursday, I will have to get it on the wall because standing back away from it will be essential to getting the final work right. Im not sure I can stand back far enough. Everything has to "read" from a distance and in case the work is hung higher. (This presumes I actually get IN the show)
I will probably have to move outside which is problematic as bugs fly into the paint all the time when I do.

Flannery is standing in water so I really dont have to paint her legs very well. Yay! I just have to have the suggestion of them beneath the water color. Same goes for how the part of her dress is submerged - it should just read as slightly darker than the water color. Koby's paw print is still very visible, but it will disappear by tomorrow. This is the end of the work day - its getting too dark and the lights make too much reflection which makes it hard to see what the paint is doing. Natural light is the only way to go. It really is.

You can get an idea of how that works here although this is just the first of may layers. This water will have a lot of life: it will have concentric circles radiating from Flannery as well as light waves and tonal variations. The water will take hours. Hours and hours. And I need that dress to look floaty, so that is an engineering problem for tomorrow.

I put up a little motivational poster for myself. Like I said, Ive won a prize in this show before, but I would like to win a MONEY prize. But even if I dont, Im kind of stoked that I am painting a real person -however stylized. I havent done that in a long time and its a fun challenge.

Tomorrow: making beautiful water, more back ground, and laying down the peacock's first layer. Thanks for joining me!

The Process: Day 1

Okay I said I was going to take a hiatus, but instead, I am going to post at the end of everyday this week to show the process of making a painting. I have been thinking about Flannery O'Connor a lot lately and had a vision of her standing in water. Then I went to Aunty's blog and she had a post about Flannery and I took that as a sign to go ahead and paint the vision.

 I am doing this painting for an upcoming national juried show; the deadline to submit a CD with photos of the painting is this Sunday. That's the deadline to just get in the show. The actual show is in October. Im motivated by prize money and achievement. Painting a person is kind of out of my realm, but I plan to maintain my surrealist approach to the challenge. Today I picked up the wood substrate from my friend J.T. and gessoed it. It is 40x40 which is pretty big for me. My strategy is that by having a work that is close to the size limit, I can get on the 'big wall' with the good lighting. I printed out some source material and did the drawing. I have had the vision of how it would be for a long time, so when it came time to draw it flowed pretty well.

Koby, of course, stepped in the wet gesso and I plan to do nothing about it. This footprint is in the part of the painting that will be water. The composition is Flannery at Andalusia standing in the pond holding one of her beloved peacocks, whose tail flows into the water with the design of the feathers becoming very large in the foreground. Above her, the eye of God breaks through a cloud and rains down grace in golden drops. It is a kind of baptism. Ive tried to work in having her leg braces (a result of having Lupus, which is what killed her) falling away or maybe being at the bottom of the pond - because they are not needed anymore.

Right now, I am waiting for the first layer of the background to dry. Its a very rich layered golden yellow with the edges going deeper with an overlay of transparent red. There will be a lot of blues in this painting so this golden background will be critical to warming the final art. I leave my drawing kind of dark so I can see what I am doing and paint a little over the lines to make sure I have good paint coverage where colors meet. I can always make corrections later but I tend to have a fairly tight drawing before I pick up a paintbrush. At the end, the textural stuff and last minute flourishes that make the surface sing are added as needed. But that would be on day 5 or six.

I hope you will join me this week to see how this painting develops. Suspense! Will I make deadline? Stay tuned.

Tomorrow I will probably work on Flannery's face a little bit because if I can't get that right, or to a point where I know it will be right, all the other labor will be wasted time.

* Yesterday, J.T., my friend who prepped the wood for this Flannery project, brought his wife over to get the painting he traded me in exchange for painting the outside of my studio. I think she was really excited to get it, and know that he feels it was a good trade. It is a 24 x 24" painting of a "Rain Deer". It looks Indian (as in Hindu) to me. I just finished it on Saturday  - a good warm up for this week's work although what I am planning is more restrained and controlled than this piece:

Heartbreak!

My truck has a dead cylinder. It will need a new engine to run again. Anyone who has ever loved a truck will surely understand the choice facing me...repair it even though it has other issues; rust, and possibly a transmission problem down the road or say goodbye. The truck was unique with the cab lights and flat primer gray - I never took out the rebel flag with a bass headliner. It was the best farmer's market truck ever, I got more compliments on this truck than you can shake a stick at.

It had character and it was fun.

I have a garden full of flowers to sell, but the farmer's market is over for me. I dont even think I could fit the flowers into my car - my car which cannot do any of the farm chores this truck does. Losing the truck is like losing a lifeline to a way of life. So much of what I do here at Chickory revolves around this truck! Shooting video for the county: the truck goes down dirt and gravel; it can get scratched and dirty. It hauls all the garden supplies; takes the dogs out; and my favorite thing...driving around at sunset just "looking at stuff".

Im crushed and that's all there is to say about it.