On Becoming a Girl

I had a chance today to work on the piece I began a couple of weeks ago and had been avoiding ever since.  I had a great first day with it then left it on the easel til today.  Why was I avoiding it, you might well ask?  Well!  I had begun it by splashing paint all over and wanted to keep with that looseness, but I couldn't figure out how to do it.  (If you've been reading my blog lately, you'll notice that's been a theme the last few weeks since Thomas's workshop.) 

Today I decided that I wanted to work on it and what it needed was detail work so that the face would look better.  That's not a tricky thing for me to do usually - details are what I do well.  So it went pretty well, and I think she looks better.

I realize that when I've talked about this piece before, I haven't talked about the story behind it at all like I usually do with my models. 

This young woman is, as I suppose is rather obvious if you look at the painting carefully, in the process of changing genders.  She was born male and has come to realize that she feels like a woman so she has decided to go through the process of making her body congruent with her feelings about herself.  I am in awe of her courage.  I think it must be very difficult to feel like you were born in the wrong body then to decide to do something about it, despite all the messages society would inflict about that choice.  I love the strength of her pose in this picture and how clearly and straightforwardly she stares at the viewer, bold, proud, clear.

I wish her many wonderful years as a woman.  May it be exactly as she imagines.

Faux Fur Follies Day 4

Yesterday I finally took the plunge and added pattern to the picture of Lynn which I'm calling Faux Fur Follies.  It took me a long time to figure out which pattern to add, and I have to give Chris a lot of credit - he came out to the studio and talked me through it and watched as I photoshopped some possibilities in to see how it would look.  Here is our photoshop edition, a bit crude, but it gave me enough of an idea that I decided to go with it.  (on the right)

Last night I got some of the colors put on.  I was feeling pretty good about it.  The orange was the underpainting and felt too bright, so I was glad when I got rid of that today.  I chose colors that were less pink than in the photoshopped version. (on the left)

Today I finished the pattern wall then put shadows behind her knee, the coat, and her hand.  I also increased the amount of flooring to her right in order to make the room look larger.  Then, finally, I changed the color of the wall behind her.  I thought about adding another pattern behind her.  Here's that thought: 

There's a lot I like about it - I like the sense of space that the lines create and the fun of it.  Chris said he thinks it looks like a fun house.  I'm not opposed to that, given how happy she looks.  It makes the picture even more enigmatic - where is she and what is she doing there and why is she there and what the heck is happening??!!

In preparation for that step, I painted the wall behind her tan.  I took a moment to step back and look at it before painting the pattern (plus, I needed to wait for the paint to dry).  I decided I really like it with just the tan, so for now I'm going to leave it like this.  I worked on her hair somemore and may do some more on her coat, but otherwise, I might be finished.  Maybe.  Unless I get a wild hair someplace that makes me do something else to it!

Trying to break through old patterns using patterns

Geez!  I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted anything - a flurry of posts then nothing!  I've been busy in the studio despite that.

Last Friday we took my youngest to college for his Freshman year.  Since then each day i've been checking my email frequently, hoping for a missive from him, telling about the good times he's having.  I've received a total of 20 lines, 2 of which regarded money.  Yes, well.  I guess I'd better get used to it!

In the meantime, I've been walking with my friend Lynn, a 65-year-old woman who runs marathons and is planning an ascent of Mount Kilamanjaro for February 2011.  I am so blessed to have her in my life.  She's helping me get in shape, but she also inspires me like crazy because of how she lives her life.  I love spending time with her!

The way I got to know her was through her modeling for me.  She saw my 12 Naked Men show in Petersburg and told me she'd like to model for me.  Unfortunately I couldn't read her email address accurately so couldn't get in touch with her that time around, but luckily she found me again at Crossroads when I was showing The Dancer at 89.  She was adamant that she wanted to model for me so we set up a time right then and there.

Bling Lady was the first piece I did of her from that session.  I have several other pieces I'd like to do from then, but haven't gotten around to them yet. 

A couple of months after I first photographed her, she told me her sister and neice were going to be in town and she'd like to bring them over to see the painting.  I told her that would be fine and if they wanted to model while they were here, that would be great too (just kidding!).  Lynn took me seriously and told them that's what they were going to do. 

We had a great time in the studio that day!  Her sister and neice were wonderful models.  The three of them were so at ease with themselves and each other.  I got some fabulous shots and have painted a picture of them already.  I'm not at liberty to show it because, though they're comfortable with my painting their faces with their body, they prefer me not to show them on the internet.  Totally fine.

One of the props we used that day was a fake fur coat Chris had just gotten me for my birthday.  I turned 50 and his gift to me was to take me shopping for a winter coat because mine was getting worn out after 8 years of constant use.  I was looking for another practical piece to replace it, but then Isaw these crazy floor length fur coats.  I tried on a white one with a huge hood just for kicks.  I actually LOVED it!  I felt like a fairy princess snow queen.  Not the look I usually aim for, but I loved it!  I tried on more and more of the coats and told Chris that I was actually going to get one of them!  In the end I bought two - a short one I wear almost daily and a floor length one that looks like a racoon coat from the 50's or whenever it was the guys wore those in college.  I love it!  I haven't actually worn it out of the house yet because I don't quite have the gall to show up with it on anywhere - I don't really go anywhere that calls for a fur coat - but I'm working on it!  Maybe by this winter I'll have come up with someplace - maybe I'll wear it at my opening in October despite the heat in the building with 100's of people crowding around.  Or not.

At any rate, I brought it out to show to Lynn and her sister and neice.  They loved them and started clowning around in them.  Of course I snapped pictures while they were playing.  They're very fun!

That's the back story.

A couple of weeks ago when Lynn and I were walking, she was telling me what she thought of the paintings I'd done during Tom's workshop.  She LOVED the Jenny Saville one.  She said that's how she feels!  Like that paint, those colors, that energy!  She wanted to know why I didn't paint her that way.  She said she liked the piece I did of her, but it was so calm and restrained - why didn't I do this with her?

Well!  I'd been wanting to try such unrestrained painting ever since the workshop, but I'd built up in my mind that my models might be bothered by it (is that true, models???) - that they might find such outrageous energy shameful or ugly or excessive - can you tell what my judgments are?  Yet that was exactly what I wanted to do. 

And here Lynn was giving me permission and asking me to do it with her painting!  That evening I went out to the studio and started playing with Adobe and modifying some of the photos I have of Lynn.  The one on the left is the one I played with the most.  She loved it!  I don't know that I'll paint it like this, but it could give me a good start for getting wilder with the colors and the energy.

The thing that is difficult for me is to recognize that crazy colors and wildly energetic looking doesn't mean random, wild strokes with equal intensity to the mark making.  Those strokes have to be every bit as careful as the way I normally work.  So really, the painting isn't different except in the colors I would use.  At some level I'm looking to be more expressive with the strokes too.  It's the process I'm in, I guess.

As an intermediate step, I decided to work on a piece of Lynn in the fur coat.  I really love her expression and her pose and figured I could have some fun with it.

The first picture was the beginning.  I decided to put a very bold color down for the background colors and to play with the colors in the coat.  I regret the colors in the coat.  I don't like how greenish the yellow is.  Lynn's coloring is pinker than that, so I find it jarring, but I'm not done yet!

I decided to paint her body completely realistically and make it as beautifully rendered as I could manage then play with the coat and background, sort of like Gustav Klimt did his women.  As you can see in this image, the face and hands are painted very realistically (except for his color choice perhaps - she's a bit too blue and pale to look completely realistic), then the rest of it is full of incredible patterns.  The piece is a portrait, but clearly it's more about the patterns.  I haven't decided if I want to go that far or not.  I love drawing patterns.  It's how I doodle.  I would love to figure out how to combine both things - patterns and portraits - but so far I haven't been able to see how to do it.  I could take that chance in this painting, but, frankly, I've gotten attached to the outcome and want to make it pretty.  I'm afraid to screw it up.

Writing that makes me know it's the only choice I really have.  I have to let myself play.  Otherwise why should I even bother doing art?  If I don't take a chance, I should just close up shop and go home.

Yikes!  Here are some of the patterns I've done before.  OK.  I'm ready!  They're gonna be in the painting!  Wish me luck!

The artistic journey - from Farmer's Market to volcanic explosion of passion

Tomato about to go

Introspected Pepper

Last Saturday I went to the Farmer's Market with my friend Tina.  I wasn't planning to buy much since I'd already bought to much the week before which was steadily rotting in my frig, but when she showed me the fabulous long and skinny red peppers which were curled in on themselves and the bright orange little ones, I realized they needed to be drawn!  So this week I've had a lovely time drawing peppers and tomatoes.

Of course, I realize that drawing all these color studies and peppers and tomatoes is just a way to avoid what I really want to be working on - my new female nude!  I've gotten blocked working on it and haven't gotten back to it since the first day I spent 6 hours on it.  I like how it looks now, except that it needs some revisions.  I'm worried I'll try to make it too perfect and it'll lose some of the spontenaity.  I want to throw paint at it and play, but it's at the stage where playing isn't exactly the right thing to do.

I want to start another canvas, but Chris has no time to build me one.  I have so many ideas now about what to do. I want to play with the backgrounds - splashes and slashes and curls and who knows what else?  Utter energy.

I have a photo of a friend who was clowning while wearing my floor length (fake) fur coat.  I really want to paint it.  I have a vision of how it can look.  This wonderful friend saw the work I did during Thomas's workshop, specifically the one where I was learning about Jenny Saville's methods, and said, "Why don't you paint me like that?  I wish you'd paint me like that!  It's my insides on the outside!"  So now I have her permission to play with the images of her.

Up until she gave me her permission, I've been worried about painting my models with too much frenzy and spontenaity because they won't look "beautiful and serene" when I'm finished - probably - I actually have no idea how they'll look - it would be about playing.  It would be about exploring the image and how I feel about it.  Up until now, I've approached the image from the point of the view of the model.  I've wanted to be respectful and paint a beautiful painting as a means of helping them love their bodies and how they look.  I have every intention of continuing to be respectful.  That is a given.  But I'm feeling a very strong urge to allow myself to come through more onto the canvas.  I have a wellspring of passion inside of me which I suppress pretty thoroughly which is why my paintings are so accurate and photo-based.  I'm finding that it's time to break through my own opposition to my passion and to let it flow.

I see a volcanic eruption of white fire - passion, love, anger, grief - the whole gamut of feelings I've managed to repress all these years.  I always tried to be a good girl so I wouldn't make other people uncomfortable.  Well, guess what?  I've now finally learned that if THEY are uncomfortable, it's THEIR problem!  And it isn't MY job to make them comfortable or happy or anything else.  My job is to take care of myself and to express myself fully.  If people get mad at me about that, that is for them to deal with.  Perhaps I'll get some flack.  Perhaps I'll lose some friends.  But I'll be a more full and complete human being, and I think the art I create from that place will be significantly more important and authentic and gorgeous than anything I have created heretofore.

So watch out, world!  I'm coming out!

To my models, if you have an opinion about how you prefer to be painted, I'd love to hear it.  I'm curious.  It could be I've stayed staid, thinking it was your preference, when, like with my model above, it wasn't!  It could be that playful and spontaneous is perfect for you too.  Or it could be that you prefer the perfectly rendered pictures.  Or it could be that you have 50 other things you've thought about which haven't even occurred to me yet.  Collaboration is a powerful thing - it leads to much better art than working alone, so please let me know.  I'm so curious! 

This art journey is such a GREAT one to be on!

Tomato

Valley Haggard's Brazilian Experience

Valley Haggard is the wonderful woman with whom I'm doing the Collaborative show in Ashland in February.  Right before she came to model for me the second time a couple of weeks ago, she had gotten a Brazilian - don't know what that is?  Read on!

The Heartbreaker

Seeing myself differently, or how to wax poetic.
By Valley Haggard

Ever since my husband and I went to see “The Vagina Monologues” on Valentine’s Day in 2001, I swore I would never, ever shave Down There. I barely shave my legs past the knees and only recently have I started shaving my armpits in any season other than summer. But approaching my 35th
birthday, I feel it is time to find a rite of passage for my entry into this new stage of womanhood.

One of my best friends flew to Africa for her 35th, another to Paris. Me? I book a Brazilian.  To be honest, I don’t know precisely what a Brazilian Heartbreaker is when I call Bombshell Brazilian
Waxing and Skincare Studio in Carytown to schedule my appointment, but when the owner, Melissa Bryant, advises me to take four ibuprofen before I come in, I start to get a clearer picture.

“I’m not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful,” proclaims Marilyn Monroe from the wall of the adorable, spotless salon where everything is either pink, black or leopard print. Melissa greets me, nodding with empathy as I explain how terrified and excited I am. The former general manager of Nesbit’s Salon, Melissa opened Bombshell in February, offering tanning, hair and nail work, makeup and all manner of waxing. She has spent many years making women wonderful.

As I make myself comfortable on her table, inspecting various bottles of ointment, tweezers and a huge vat of hot green wax, Melissa turns down Frank Sinatra on the phonograph and explains the process. “First,” she says, “you’re going to do the frog.” There are, I discover, several other yoga positions I will find myself in over the course of the next hour, including the pretzel and a modified happy baby. Totally exposed from the waist down, I bend my legs into V’s as Melissa slathers me with a healthy dose of lotion and lidocaine numbing spray. “I call this greasing the pan,” she laughs, before trimming me with an electric razor. I imagine that I am about to mow the lawn with a sickle on the hottest day of the year, and a tiny bead of sweat forms on my brow.

But the wax is hot in a pleasant way and although I brace every muscle in my body for the first pull, the pain is surprisingly mild. I thank my lucky stars, because in order to complete the job, Melissa must revisit my most delicate regions with this wax and yank process a few dozen more times. Her upbeat, professional bedside manner could school more than a few gynecologists, I think, shocked to find myself yammering away as if I were wearing pants, in a coffee shop somewhere.

“I am so OCD,” says Melissa, fastidiously cleaning me up with a razor and tweezers, fashioning
a perfect heart out of heretofore raw materials, coating the final product in baby powder and tea tree oil. “This is Bactine for your hoo-ha,” she explains, admiring her handiwork. And I must say, for a girl like me, the results are both pretty and pretty shocking. “I kicked ass!” I tell Melissa and she agrees. After this, I could do most anything.

She sends me out the door with congratulations and a care package: detailed maintenance instructions, an exfoliating glove and a blow pop. As I walk to the car I feel triumphant with my secret. There’s a fine line between a skinned cat and a fresh peach, but who’s splitting hairs?

Reprinted with permission by the author.  Original article can be found at http://issuu.com/styleweekly/docs/belleonline.  Valley's writing will be combined with my paintings in our collaborative show at Randolph Macon College in Ashland, VA, in Feburary 2011.  More details to follow as the time gets closer!

Collaborative Color Study #6

Mary Ivory Smith, thank you for so kindly sending Dylan your hospital bottle, and thank you for so kindly donating some wonderful colors to my color study game!  Here's what I came up with from your colors, forest green, sky blue, and rose pink.  Hope you enjoy it!

Collaborative Color Study #5

This color study is thanks to my wonderfully supportive mother, Emma Lou Martin, who gave me the colors: turquoise, purple and coral.  Such a pretty, bright combination!

Collaborative Color Study #4

This one was thanks to the wonderful efforts of Ann-Marie Neale, Adele Castillo, Pam Varner, and Kim Harvey.  The colors are gulf coast blue, fuschia, and orchid.  I didn't really know what orchid was, but my artist buddies at the Collaborative Arts Group informed me last night that it's a pinky purply color.  Wikipedia confirmed it.  I'm not so sure about gulf coast blue either, having not been there in so many years - the last time I was there, it was Red Tide, and now there's oil in the gulf, so I figure I have a lot of latitude on that one!  It's the surrounding color as well as the middle color.

Just in case you're interested...  all of these color studies are for sale for $99 each (unframed, unmatted) until the end of August, so get 'em while they're hot!

Collaborative Color Study #2 & #3

Laura Blizzard inspired me with the names of her colors to do water-themed pictures/color studies.  The colors were sea foam, aquamarine and coral.  I had to look up coral and sea foam to make sure I was thinking of the right colors!  I don't know if they're the same colors she was thinking of, but it's been fun doing this process! 

 I did #2 last night then, as I was falling asleep, starting thinking about a different way to use the same colors - water, sunrise, seafoam.  I started on it right away this morning!

Collaborative Color Study #1

Hal and Mary Beth's color study is ready!

Singapore Sunset Saffron, Green Celery Salt, and Mediterranean Midnight Magenta

Ta-da!

new game

I've decided to try a new game:  Send me the name of a color.  Once I have a group of three, I'll make a color study out of it then post it here.  The trick is making something cohesive out of a set of disparate elements and making them look interesting, lively, and/or lovely. 

Will you be the one to challenge me?!

Color Studies massively on sale!

I've decided to put my newest color studies on sale for $99 each, unframed, unmatted.  I usually sell them for $350 each, beautifully matted and framed, but I'm wanting to sell some artwork this summer, and I don't feel like framing them, so I'm ready to let them go. I'm going to do several more between now and Monday so stay tuned. 

If you like the color studies and want to own one, this is the best opportunity you'll ever get!  You can see them on the last couple of days' blogs.  The sale will end August 31.

You can let me know if you're interested by commenting to this blog and we'll work it out!

Happy Art Buying!
Susan

Today I worked on revising some pastel pieces I'd thought were finished.  Last night Chris and I started the fairly arduous process of framing 7 pieces for the show I have coming up in October.  I cut the mats while he cut the wood for the frames.  I'm so blessed to have such a talented, supportive husband to make beautiful frames for me.

Because I had good luck using spray fixative on my self portrait, I decided I was going to fix the pieces I was getting ready to frame because I am tired of having pastel dust fall onto pristine white mats, causing me to have to re-mat the pieces.  It's a pain in the butt!  So today I got out my wonderful Schminke fixative and went at it.  3 of the pieces weren't too bad - they seem to have taken off a layer of pastel, but it was manageable - but the 4th one was horrible!  It went from glowing to dark and dull.  I was so disappointed.  there was no way I could frame it like that, so I brought it into the studio and started working on it again.  The picture on the left is how it looked pre-fixative.  The one on the right is after I repaired/re-did the fixed piece.  The good news is that I think it's a stronger piece now.  The bad news is that I can't fix it for fear of messing it up again!  Oh well - what's a bit of pastel dust on a mat?

After I finished repairing Valley's Folds, I decided to re-do another piece, American Beauty.  I had been pleased with it when I finished it, but the more it hung around the studio, the less I liked it.  The colors were too yellow and fake.    I decided to try to make the colors more realistic, or at least more muted.  I began by changing the background.  That made a huge different right away.  Then I put more pink into the flesh, and green and blue into the shadows.  That made is look richer and more realistic immediately.  I love how powerfully complementary colors create shadows and make the form have the illusion of going back.

The third piece I did some work on today was Just Thinkin'.  That one has an interesting history - the model at first was almost defiant in wanting me to paint her whole body, including her face.  After our session, though, and after thinking about it for a while, she realized she wasn't comfortable with it after all.  I think she was concerned that people she knew might see the pictures and use them against her. 

She's not the only model who has had that concern.  Another woman was worried her employer might see her picture and fire her simply because "that's not the kind of woman they want working for them, and they don't need an excuse to fire someone."  I hate it that women need to have those concerns.  I understand them, and I honor them completely.  I just hate that it could be the case. 

Anyway, the model for Just Thinkin' saw the piece I had done of her and asked me to remove the tattoo on her shoulder so she wouldn't be recognizable even by that in case someone should see it.  So the other revision I did today was to "erase" the tattoo - much easier done in pastels than in real flesh!

I think it's really interesting all the feelings we women go through when deciding whether to model, how much to show, whether to show our faces or not, who can see the pictures, etc., etc.  I've had those feelings myself when thinking about my self-portrait, so I completely understand. 

This evening I had the pleasure of teaching intermediate pastels in the studio.  I love teaching!  It's so exciting to see people come into their own as artists and to see them develop the awareness that they, too, can draw well!  It's exhilarating!

Man, it is hard for me to focus some days!  Today was one of them.  I got up at 6:15 to go for a walk with a friend then came home and ate and showered and talked to Chris before he went to work.  I came out to the studio before my tutoring student at 9:30 and worked on a color study.  I'm calling it deep evergreen forest in sunlight.  It felt good to play before teaching.  I've never been one to get up early in the morning until this past year, but now I'm starting to appreciate the advantages of it.  I feel like by 9:30 the day is half way over.

Maybe that's why it was hard to concentrate today.  I taught til 10:30 then helped Dylan load his car then came back out to work but got hungry so went in for lunch then it was almost 1 and I'd been up for almost 7 hours.  Geez!

At any rate, I did another color study after lunch, called Cloudy Day.  I wanted to create more subtleties as compared to the first one.

Then I did email and wasted time til I finally couldn't think of anything else to do, so then I finally started working on my new piece again.  I'm enjoying it, I think, but I didn't know what to do - I liked the looseness I'd established at the beginning and didn't want to mess that up by getting tight like I tend to do, but I couldn't figure out what else to do.  So I refined it like usual.  The difference, I think, was that the beginning was loose so I had that to work with/against.  I could be more playful and bold and I was refining.  I used colors I might not have used in the past and put more paint down. 

When Chris got here a few minutes ago, I was feeling like it was finished but then he very helpfully - really!  It was helpful!  I'm not being sarcastic! - pointed out that the face is off a bit and the lips are a bit odd, so now I have something to work on tomorrow.  It helps me get focused when I know exactly what I want to work on when I get out here.

So tomorrow will be another opportunity to make this piece look better, and this evening is a chance to go kayaking with my wonderful husband!  See you on the river!

Colors Studies and a Tomato

Regretably, I wasn't able to get back to my new piece today.  But I did still get to create, thank goodness!  I needed to create some new work for the website ArtQuiver because I've sold two pieces there recently!  Very good news!  Here are the pieces I drew today:

light blue with outline

light blue with cream

bright with dark

bright green and orange

tomato

I don't plan to put Tomato on ArtQuiver because they don't have any of my other fruits and veggies so I doubt they'll be interested in them, but we had a beautiful tomato that needed to be drawn, so that's why I did it!  The others I just decided to have fun creating color combinations and smearing gorgeous pigment around the page.  It's such a pleasure making the color studies!

Workin' my stuff

It took me a while to build up my courage to start on the new canvas.  For one thing, I asked Chris to make it 40"x60" then decided to reduce the size to 30"x45" but regrettably forgot to mention that to Chris (!), so when I came home from teaching Tuesday, he had already made it the larger size.  Intimidating!  It has ended up being perfect - I'm loving the larger size - but it made it a little harder for me to get going.

Plus I couldn't figure out how to incorporate all the new stuff I learned from Thomas - Jenny Saville?  Freud?  Rembrandt?  Whose lead should I follow?

I took out my books by each of them plus another 10 or so books with other nudes in them and looked to see which sort of image I wanted to end up with.  The interesting thing was that none of the pictures looked like I wanted mine to look.  The colors were off, or they were too extreme, or not extreme enough, or they distorted the figure - whatever.  Though I didn't quite have a vision of how I wanted mine to end up, I couldn't find it in the books either.

I decided that was a good thing and it meant I was doing something unique, so I began!

I mixed up a bunch of colors I saw in her flesh - purple, pink, green, burnt sienna.  I decided to use a light green for cool and alizarin crimson mixed with vermillion for hot colors with enough dioxinine violet in there to deepen the shadows.  For those of you for whom that last sentence was Greek, what I mean is this:  when I look at a photograph or a person I want to paint, I think about values - where the lights and shadows are.  Then I take that one step further and consider where the woman's flesh looks warm and cool.  Creating those contrasts helps bring the form forward or send it back, thus creating a stronger illusion of three dimensionality.  If an artist accentuates the cool colors, the figure will be less appealing in most cases - more corpse-like perhaps.  If she focuses on the hot colors, the body looks more sweltering and full of life.  I think Freud focuses on cool greys, and Saville has hotter colors in her works.

In the picture of my palette(s), you can obviously see the darks and lights, but perhaps the hots and cools are evident also.  There are some cool greens on the left, and the oranges and reds and browns are on the right.

I put a lot of turpenoid on my brush then picked up a gob of paint - the turpenoid thinned out the paint a lot so it would drip and run and go on smoothly.  I worked in the shadow areas mostly because I wanted to get some interesting color into those so the piece would feel strong.

My next step surprised me - I had thought I might let the darks dry like that then come back in with the lights later, but instead I picked up some of the light green with my brush and started putting it in.  The brush was large - 3" - twice the size I usually use - so I didn't have a lot of control - a good thing, in my case!  I picked up some of the dark colors accidentally.  That ended up spreading the shadows and modifying them in lovely ways. 

After that, I took a smaller brush and did some work on her face.  I did a lot of it with larger brushes, but knew I wanted a better level of detail there, so I let myself use smaller ones.  After that I put in the curtains in the background and worked some areas up more.  I especially focused on the hand but was excited by how that went.  I'd put down the shadows and finger delineations carefully even though they looked like sausages hanging off her arm.  When I went back in with the right colors and a slightly smaller brush, I was surprised  how easily I could move the paint around and get an accurate-looking rendering quite quickly.  I'm finding it helps a lot to have so much paint on the canvas.  I'm used to working with it much thinner.

Today I want to refine her facial features and some shadows which seem a bit off.  Her left leg seems odd too, so I'll check on that.  Otherwise I'm feeling like she's pretty much done.  All that huge canvas in about 6 hours.  Ones that size usually take weeks.  I think it's the difference in confidence and looseness and trusting that I can say what I want to say in broader strokes. 

Dear Chris - now he's going to have to spend the weekend making me more canvases! 

My Freudian phase

For the fourth image I was working on last week, I tried to incorporate Lucien Freud's style.  What I like about Freud's work is the utter humanity in it.  His paint surfaces are thick and groddy with lots of grey in them.  I never use grey.  I avoid grey!  Freud's studio is a horrible mess with rags and globbed paint and dirt all over the place.  I try to keep mine neat and clean and tidy so I can find everything, and I have to clearn up and organize before starting a new picture each time.  Freud's studio looks like he's never done that.  I feel sorry for his models who lie on piles of rags or a ragged bed or sofa.  I don't judge it so much as I'm aware I would be very uncomfortable being there!  But I LOVE his paintings.  There is a raw strength in them that comes from both the presence of the painted surface and from the presence of the models in his work.  He works from life and spends 100's of hours on each piece.  He models the surface almost like a sculptor with clay.

When I decided to study his work and to try to emulate aspects of his style, I realized several things - my paint had to be lots thicker; I had to use grey; I couldn't use many colors; I had to put on more layers than I'm used to, in much thicker paint.

I mixed up a pallette of colors and literally put dirt and chalk into them to thicken them and dry them out.  I also mixed up an achromatic grey using black and white.  I had never painted with black before.  I still didn't use it directly, but it certainly is in all the colors I used.  The first part I started to paint was the leg.  I had some lovely layers on it and was feeling good about it when Thomas came up, globbed on about an inch of paint on a flat brush and applied it crudely to the canvas - "No!  Now that's more like it!"  Ugh!  He ruined my pretty picture!  AND, admittedly, (pout), made my picture more powerful because I had to bring it all up to that level.  Now the leg looks like you see it on the right - it looks like I put clay on the canvas and made the darn thing 3-D.  I don't find it appealing and don't want to paint this way in general, but it's an outstanding exercise for learning what the possibilities are.  I would otherwise NEVER glob so much paint on!  Ugly!!

I finished the rest of the model's lower body similarly with lots of paint.  It felt freeing to glob the paint on and to let it be so ugly.  I didn't worry about messing up because I knew I could cover it in another layer with more paint.  That gave me a sweet freedom to experiment with colors and shading I might not have done otherwise.

That took me through the end of the morning.  In the afternoon, I began on her upper body.  Thomas wasn't around so much, so I drifted back somewhat to my more normal way of painting.  The paint is smoother, but I still worked with the colors more like I perceive him to.  I used grey and found that to be quite powerful.  I upped the amps on the colors to a certain extent the way Jenny Saville did, so sort of began to combine what I'd learned from both artists.

I think this upper part is more the way I'll try to paint in my next piece: considerably thicker paint, stronger color, bolder choices, more trust of the paint.  I'm realizing I have the skills now to render what I want to.  Now that I can do that, I can begin to experiment more and use my skills to explore other things.  The skills are there.  I can count on them and can begin to see just what it's possible to do with paint.

Musings from the Studio

I haven't gotten into the studio since the workshop ended, but my head has been there almost full time.  I've been thinking a lot about what I'm going to do next.  I feel so freed from my normal constraints after travelling into Saville- and Freud-land.  (See previous post if you have no clue what I'm alluding to!)  I can see many more ways to apply paint, many of which fit with my yearning to explore my inner landscape more fully.  I have a feeling that my work will shift from here on out - permanently?  temporarily?  no idea.  But it feels great to have all these thoughts and ideas and visions in my head and now to have some idea of how to realize them in the physical world.  Fun is coming!!