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| Luke: Patron Saint of Painters. gouache illustration for Bas Bleu Bookseller |
a winged ox
from Ezekiel's mystic apocalypse
to sunlit studio
resplendent in wing and wisdom
centuries of time traversed
bringer of vision
sure hands
show it if you tell it
eternal friend
you never fail
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I painted Koby for V's anniversary present. (It turns out we have only been married 18 years.) I had a left over piece of 24 x 24 red oak from the table V made for the studio, and used it for the substrate. I used the photo I took of Koby on the last snow day as my guide and think it is pretty close. In a way, the painting is more Koby-like than the photo, possibly because I tried to compensate for the foreshortening that makes her nose disproportionately large
Originally I had a background with some surface decoration that I painted back over muting it down to some "noise". I had planned to do some kind of raindrop pattern but then I saw a woodpecker outside and decided to paint a ring of living things around her. It ended up being too bright and too much, so I decided to sand it down. That looked cool like she was painted on some old sign or something. But the sanding took off some of the background color, so when I patched it up, it didnt match because I had changed the character of the surface with the sanding.
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| Note the homage to Frida Kahlo with the dead bird necklace |
On Friday I went back in and painted the ring of life again and changed some of the elements, making it a bit more symmetrical than what you see above. I will need to then add some deeper golden color behind it to give it dimension, and then sand it down again, but with a lighter hand. Then I might over paint the ring with the yellow background color in sheer washes to take it down further. If that doesnt work I will accept that this idea failed (or I failed the idea is a better way to say it) and start again - but the dog herself stays as is. I hope to finish tomorrow.