Nancy

This week I decided, on impulse, to paint a portrait of my cleaning lady, Nancy. I had taken a few photos of her with that in mind a few months back and then forgotten all about it, but it popped into my brain last week and I started prepping the board.

I used a 10x10-inch square cradle board so that I could make it ornamental and "self-framing." I had asked Nancy what were her favorite colors and flowers, and she answered "Roses" and "pink and yellow," so I pulled out a favorite all-over rose stencil pattern. I made the background a pale green, and then did the roses in yellow and pink, with an occasional blob of darker green in between them (even though there are no actual leaves on the stencil). I decided it would be too busy and repetitive to use this stencil on the sides of the cradle board as well, so instead I used a stencil with just leaves.

   

   

I chose the leaf-and-flower motif because one of the nice "extra" things that Nancy has been doing for me for the past few months is watering all the plants and shrubs in my yard. She was at first just doing this on Saturday mornings when she comes to clean, but since it's been so hot she's also been showing up on Wednesday or Thursday night after a full day's work elsewhere to make sure my plants don't wilt in the heat. She has often expressed a wistfulness that she doesn't have her own garden (she lives in an apartment) and has mentioned how much she enjoys spending time in mine, so I thought setting her in those surroundings would make for a great theme.

After stenciling, I used a thinned-out shade of Titan pale green to knock back the intensity of both the background and sides, repeating the glaze several times until it felt like it was the proper intensity so that it would show up but not fight with the portrait.

Then I carefully drew Nancy's smiling face onto the background in pencil, and started to paint. I finished fairly rapidly—two afternoon's work—but ended up tweaking the portrait for three more afternoons. I have discovered that I am somewhat blind to flaws if I'm looking directly at the painting, but if I photograph or scan it and put it up on my computer screen, I can immediately see them. So I repeatedly photographed the portrait and put it up next to the original reference photo to analyze the differences. The most challenging bits were her nose, which I redid three times, and her hair, which is a dark brown/black. I wanted to show highlights, but when I used white or gray it just looked like she had gray hair, so I ended up mixing some turquoise into raw umber and that worked pretty well. The mouth and teeth were also challenging and were tweaked multiple times.

I would normally ask for feedback from my artist friends, but in this case I was more concerned with getting as perfect a likeness as possible than with the artistry of it, so I sent a photo of the finished portrait to my cousin, who knows Nancy well, and she said it was good. Then I sent it to my friend Kirsti, forgetting that her husband, Aaron, also knows Nancy, and was gratified when she said that he had seen it and immediately recognized her without prompting or identification.

Today I did a few final passes on some difficult shadows under the neck and then waited for it to dry (a matter of moments in this heat!) and put a coat of satin varnish over everything. And tomorrow, after Nancy is done cleaning, I will be giving it to her, as a thank you for going the extra mile for me and also just for being a stellar individual with an engaging, positive personality who always cheers me up!

Nancy, stencils, pencil, and acrylics on a 10x10" cradle board. Gift.
(The scan is cropped a little horizontally—ordinarily I would scan it in two pieces and put them together, but with this background pattern I couldn't match them properly and gave up!)

Dancing with Dad

When I made my last post about my "Faces of California" idea, little did I know that within three weeks I'd be in the hospital! I had already started the next painting in the series, but health issues intervened; I ended up with a bad outbreak of cellulitis on both my legs from ankle to knee, jumped through many ridiculous hoops trying to get treatment, and finally ended up hospitalized for five days, followed by about three months of recuperation. Although I came home after the five days, I was still on antibiotics for awhile, and my legs remained blistered and weepy for a long time. I was unable to sit up at the computer or the easel for more than half an hour at a time for about the first five weeks, so I made little to no progress on my painting.

Since then, I have worked on it in small increments, doing the shirt, the skirt, a face, over a period of several weeks. Then I got hung up on the background. I put in some furniture that would typically appear at this kind of occasion, but it was too detailed to be background, and it distracted from the subjects of the painting. I finally, after struggling with various iterations of it for a couple of weeks, asked advice of a friend, who counseled me to paint it out and replace it with a vague background of drapes and lights represented in the blurry distance/background.

I made it as far as restoring the plain yellow background, also redoing the floor in colors that dropped back (went from warmer to cooler tones), and got stuck again. I stared at the painting every single day for about a week, looking for inspiration, and finally concluded that all that was really lacking was bravery, so I finally put in a yellow curtain with white lights. I stared at that for a few more days and absolutely hated it. The background looked amateurish and too literal behind the more painterly figures. The colors (browns and mustard yellow) didn't work. 

I went to three more artist friends for advice. One commented on the layout and I realized she was right—it was too static, and it split the figures exactly in half, a big no-no. One pointed out some subtle colors in the darks and lights that I could add in for more nuance. One shared a video of an art teacher we both follow, and I took a good look at her backgrounds, which were "blurry" rather than being detailed, and substituted amorphous shapes for specific items. I decided to implement all of that. So I painted out everything I had done behind the figures, and then experimented on paper with where and what colors to use before committing it to the actual painting. I considering adding a little stenciling for a tile effect for the floor, but it didn't work, perspective-wise.

Again, I struggled with committing, and finally did the background as it is below, redoing and refining various effects until they worked for me (more or less).

After that, I fiddled with ideas for the cradle-board edges. Because I painted out the background so many times, I didn't do a "wraparound" of what was on the front except for the skirt on the bottom, so I thought that duplicating my success on the Strawberry Fields painting by using stenciling would be a good idea. I went through the ones I owned and tried out a couple on paper but again, nothing was quite right, so I ordered more stencils and waited for them to arrive. I tried a couple of versions and finally ended up doing some roses and leaves in strong colors and then glazing over them with pale pink to make them drop back so they didn't overwhelm the more subtle colors of the painting itself.

This is, without a doubt, the painting that has taken me the longest of any I have done, and I still can't say that I'm completely satisfied with it. I loved the idea, but feel like I haven't pulled off the execution quite as I envisioned it. But after more than four months of fiddling with it, I have decided to call it done and move on! I hope somebody out there likes it.

This painting represents a father-daughter dance at a Latina girl's Quinceañera, a traditional, lavish celebration of a rite of passage marking a girl's transition to womanhood on her 15th birthday. "Quinceañera: Dancing with Dad" is an acrylic painting of 16x20 inches on a cradle board. I plan to use this self-framing base for the entire "Faces of California" series. It's more expensive by far than buying flat wooden panels, but still more frugal than having to pay for framing—and has interesting possibilities for complementing the painting both esthetically and symbolically.

I can't finish this post without saying thanks to Phoebe, Corinne, Kim, and Emma for both their patience and their good suggestions. I don't often ask advice, but sometimes you need another opinion (or four), and my friends came through for me on this trainwreck. It really helps that they're all amazing artists. Thanks, y'all!

The faces

In light of what's going on in our country with the persecution of immigrants pretty much regardless of their status, I have become moved to paint some of the faces of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is one of the most diverse cities in the world, representing more than 140 nationalities. The population is a mosaic of cultures, with no single ethnic group constituting a majority. Although the major ethnic groups are Hispanic/Latino (from Mexico and from South America), White, Asian, Black, and multiracial, the city acts as a hub for diverse communities, including significant Armenian, Filipino, Korean, Ethiopian, and Iranian populations. And each of these ethnicities and cultures brings with it a set of rich traditions, celebrations, foods, clothing and furnishing styles...almost anything you want to know about the people of the world you can find somewhere in Los Angeles. Nearly 40 percent of our residents were born outside of the United States, with more than 224 identified languages spoken in addition to English. Furthermore, 73 percent of the city's workforce are people of color.*

I wanted to include not just nationalities but also be sure to cover socioeconomic classes, genders, etc. And I wanted to share things that are unique and also things that are everyday.

I began last year with my paintings of the Latino woman and man ("Marigolds" and "Skullboy") wearing painted skull faces for Dia de los Muertos, and then ill health and the dark of winter kept me from making much progress. (I like to paint in natural light, which lasts about 90 minutes in my studio between mid-November and mid-January.) But I did some research in the meantime, and discovered David Bacon, a photographer of California field workers who agreed to let me use some of his photos as references for paintings, and I have just completed my first. It fulfills the goal of portraying the everyday, and also brings in gender—I think people may picture men when they think of field workers, but the women are out there too, under the hot sun, doing the backbreaking work that feeds California and significant parts of the States/the world via exports.

I slightly simplified the backdrop of the painting in favor of capturing the details of the two women standing in front of the fields in which they were picking strawberries. The portraits themselves were challenging because of the cast light and shadow, getting the complexions just right, and capturing their expressions. I decided that trying to paint the bandanas protecting their hair with the most common white/black patterns would detract from the faces themselves, so I left them as plain-colored scarves. I love that the one woman is wearing a "Cali" sweatshirt, since the series is all about Californians.

The biggest challenge on this one for me turned out to be the mixing of greens for the plants in the fields! I started out by using whatever greens I already had and then modifying them by adding yellows or blues or white, but they all came out muddy and nothing like what I was picturing. So I went back to basics, after asking some advice from painters better at color mixing than I am, and mixed all my greens from "scratch" using clear yellows and blues, then adding white or a touch of red. I'm still not completely satisfied with them—they don't feel either dark or bright enough for a strawberry field—but they are so much better than where I started that I decided to stop while I was ahead. I then added in miniscule dots of white and red to represent blossoms and berries.

I painted this on a cradle board so that it would need no framing, and I bought strawberry border stencils (two different ones) to use to decorate the sides. When they arrived in the mail, however, they both turned out to be too wide by almost an inch to use as they were configured (as one long, connected vine). So I broke them up into sections and just used "clumps" of leaves/berries/flowers spaced semi-evenly along the four sides. I had a little trouble with one side, but fortunately it was the bottom! So probably no one will ever look at it. Or (more likely) it will keep bugging me until I fix it! Each side is slightly different.

I'm calling this one "Strawberry Field(worker)s" and it's 16x12 inches, painted on cradle board with Golden acrylics.

I had a little trouble putting this together as a scan—my scanner cut off about half an inch at top and bottom and, since I have to scan it in two pieces, the split was right down the middle of the guy in the straw hat in the background, so fixing that wasn't perfect. And the color correction was difficult on this one. But...still better than a photo, I think.

I hope to continue on with this theme for a while with the thought of putting together a show or entering them in a competition.

*Population and nationality statistics from Wikipedia

First Let's Face It lesson of 2026

 This week the Let's Face It lessons started up, and the first one was a fun one, but done in a medium I don't enjoy and don't own: soft pastels. It's not that I don't admire them, I just don't have the patience, nor do I like having to use fixative on my art! So...I followed the lesson as far as I could (drawing it in vine charcoal, then going over that with a soft-leaded pencil and rubbing the charcoal out afterwards), and then, when I was supposed to continue by putting on layers of soft pastels in various colors, I instead broke out my palette, chose half a dozen colors of acrylic paints, and tried to mimic what our teacher, Toni Burt, did with her pastels. It sort of worked. It's a little too opaque here and there, but I did manage to be more spontaneous than I would with a straight portrait.

We were also supposed to draw someone without resorting to a reference photo, and I intended to, but I couldn't resist using the photo of Toni herself as a model. Maybe I will try another this week, and this time completely wing it.

"ToniLesson1_LFI2026"—vine charcoal, #6 pencil, acrylic paints, marking pens. 9x12 on coldpress watercolor paper.

My preference for Christmas Eve

 I haven't been able to talk anyone in my family into this, mostly because only a couple of them are real readers like I am , but this would be my ideal way to spend the holiday: Jólabókaflód—the Christmas book flood.

The founding story is here. But basically, the entire population of the country of Iceland buys books for one another as Christmas gifts, then they all open their gifts on Christmas Eve and promptly settle down on the spot to READ the books, accompanied by mugs of hot chocolate.

So yesterday I did a painting to promote the idea.

One bookstore I know of is celebrating this (on December 17th, not on the Eve), but since they are in Cleveland, I won't be able to attend. Anyone want to come over on Christmas Eve bearing a wrapped book and anticipating a quiet evening fueled by hot chocolate?

Uniball pen, watercolor, and Posca pens, 12x9 inches.

Framing alternatives

I often paint things not considering such practicalities as framing. I have gotten better about taping off a border around my watercolors to provide an edge, but I am particularly bad about thinking these things through when it comes to acrylics. And since my favored surface is a thin birch board, I frequently end up with a "wall-to-wall" picture that might be diminished were some of it to be covered in an edging of frame.

I recently learned that if you paint on a "cradle board" you can eliminate the need for framing and also provide an extra interesting element to your painting. It's sort of the opposite of a shadow box—instead of being concave, where you look into it, it's convex with the flat surface standing away from the wall about 1.75 inches. I used one of these when I painted one of my Roseville-inspired floral still life pictures—I used a stencil to create a textured background, which was then mostly obscured by the subject itself and by a thin translucent layer of paint to knock back the effect and allow the subject to shine. But I then continued the stencil pattern around the four edges, and didn't knock that back, so that it blends with and yet stands out from the painting. I really like the effect.

Unfortunately, I didn't think ahead on my latest two paintings of the female and male celebrators of Dia de los Muertos. I painted them both on thin board, and then afterwards realized that there was, for instance, such a narrow margin of T-shirt neckline below the rebozo on "Marigolds" that it would disappear if framed. Further, I didn't care for the effects of framing on these particular paintings—I liked their starkness on that flat green background. So I decided that a workable solution would be to decorate the edges of a cradle board configuration and then simply glue these pictures to the front of that, thereby giving them a decorative edge and making them stand out from the wall.

Here is the result of the first one; I painted the edges and a small margin of the front of the board in the same paler pink I had used for the background of her rebozo, and then stenciled in the colors of that garment to give her a really bright "halo" of color that will only be seen from an angle, not straight on. I bought some Gorilla-brand wood glue and some small clamps and stuck her down to her "frame."

 

I'm now waiting for my order of a second cradle board (I only had one in the house) to arrive so I can do the same to "Skull Boy" (with different stencils and colors to complement his picture themes). But this experience will definitely teach me to think ahead; those cradle boards are expensive and therefore better used as intended, rather than simply as background mounts!

Skull Boy

It all started with that very particular shade of green paint that I created for her backdrop, from mixing Titan Green Pale with about a third of turquoise. After I touched up her background, I had enough left to put a coat on another board, and I like the color so much that I decided another background like that would be good, so I grabbed the next 12x12-inch board in my stack and slathered it with "my" green.

The problem was, I couldn't decide what to paint on it. It's such a particular shade that it needs the right thing; it almost acts as a "green screen" like in special effects, to pump up whatever you paint on that ground and make it pop. So I ultimately decided that she needed a friend, and embarked on research to paint "Skull Boy" to go with "Marigolds."

I ended up using the face (and facepaint) of one guy but the eye color, skintone, and haircut of another. I wanted him to look more Latino, and the initial reference photo was of a very pretty guy with bright blue eyes and collar-length red-gold hair, which didn't quite fit! So I found a more somber lad and stole his brown eyes and brush-cut black-brown hair, and also his old-cream shirt and black velvet jacket bespangled with silver braid.

At first I was a little worried that his facepaint outshone that of "Marigolds," but she has that crown of flowers coupled with the rebozo in bright colors and patterns to give her presence, so I went with a little more elaborate design on his face.

These are really difficult to paint; you have to get the skin color right and then coat it with the white in order for it to really look like a painted face, and however much I love that green, it's a pain to cover up—it shows through pretty much everything except black. So everything has multiple coats. The eyes were also hard to make just the right size and imbue with the perfect expression; at first they were too small, and now they are probably a tad too big, but I'm done messing with them!

I realized that I really don't want to frame these two, particularly her, because the thin rim of her shirt will disappear behind framing, so I have decided I'm going to get 12x12-inch cradle boards, paint the edges with marigolds and other Dia de los Muertos patterns, and glue these two to the fronts of them so that they stand out from the wall and are beautifully free-standing. (If only I had thought to put them on cradle boards in the first place...) That's the next project.

"Skull Boy"—acrylics and Liquitex silver on birch board, 12x12 inches.