Rainy Day Forest

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 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!

A Collection and a Status Report

I've been sick with one of the worst colds I have ever had this past week. The days passed slowly. Within minutes in the garden I was so hot I could not see straight or even stay focused on the tasks before me. So I limited each visit to one specific chore, like just collecting japanese and flea beetles.

I walk around with a jar of soap and water and push the beetles into it where they drown. In a few days, their decomposing bodies produce a most unpleasant scent that works very well to keep other beetles away. I learned this trick when, on my first year of food gardening, I bought a japanese beetle trap that used sex pheromones to attract beetles to the bag and theoretically away from plants. But what actually happened was I had more beetles than ever on my plants, even though I located the bag far from the garden as the instructions stated. On the box of the japanese beetle trap it said to be sure to change the bag after it rained because the bodies would decompose, stink, and render the product useless. When I read that, I knew what to do. The smell of death repels the beetle better than the scent of sex attracts.

The drought seems to have given way to a pattern of daily afternoon showers. All manner of fungi have sprung up on the rotting logs and in the springy damp mosses of the forest. I've noticed how much better the garden does with real rain than it does with being watered with the sprinkler, no matter how thoroughly. I have a garden toad that lives under the log of the second row bed with the asparagus, although I could not find him today. I was glad when I discovered him as I have been worried when I had not found even one salamander this season, though I have seen many snakes swimming in the creek this summer.

Yesterday, I finally threw in the towel and went to the walk in clinic and got a shot of steroids and some antibiotics and some codeine laced cough syrup. Im a little better now, still very hoarse, but in a day or two will probably have the essential raspy voice for a good outing at the country music karaoke at Donald Rays Brother's Place (no joke, that is the name of the bar) up in Copperhill TN. I have accomplished very little this past week, and it makes me feel as if the world is passing me by. 

Easter has been broody and creating havoc within the flock. She will not allow any other hen into the nest and so who knows where the eggs are. If any eggs are laid in the nest, Easter sits on them and when I come to take them she screetches at me, puffs up like a turkey, and when I toss her down she comes over and gives me a good dose of the "flying foot". I take her and immerse her in the creek where only her head is above water and hold her down for about 5 minutes to drop her body temp. It works for a little while but sure enough I find her back in the coop on the nest. This has been going on for days, and I am over it. Easter is in jail now. A pen with no comforts whatsoever. no shavings at all. just newspaper laid flat and no way to cuddle up or nest. I am unmoved by her mournful peeps and trills, however, I am trying to locate some fertilized bantam eggs for her to hatch. She wants to be a mother so badly I am willing to give it a shot even though it is no small feat to travel with 4 hens and 2 Rhodesian Ridgebacks. I can't imagine adding one more creature to this equation

Speaking of Ridgebacks, It was a lucky break for me that a rat has taken up residence in my barn. I call the rat "the babysitter". I have been able to nap some with this cold without worrying about where the dogs are thanks to the babysitter. This rat keeps the dogs busy for hours, no exaggeration, at a time. Eventually I will have to trap and kill this poor creature, but I swear, I have actually become fond of him. Its funny as hell to watch him toy with the dogs. I made a little video of it -very hard to do because I have to try and shoot while using a long piece of trim to motivate the rat. The sound of the dogs voices in slo-mo make me laugh every time. I need to sample those sound effects for future video work.

Thanks to everyone for your support regarding the Frida Kahlo challenge sponsored by Bohemia Beer. I did not win a prize, but I did receive an email yesterday inquiring about buying the painting for the Bohemia collection. I have given them a price and we shall see. If they agree, the day I spent on that project will have been well worth it.

As Per Trolls request in comments, here are the winners of the Frida Kahlo Challenge:

first place: Ernesto Cammacho

second place: Elizabeth Ortiz

third place: Jose Luis Padilla

you can see all the entries here