Significant women

It's been a while since I painted someone in the news, someone who signifies a milestone for our country and culture—but what could be a better thing to celebrate right now, in the midst of gerrymandering, book banning, and the erosion of women's rights, than the appointment to the Supreme Court of our land of its first Black woman?

So I reverted to the style I used when I was painting a lot of these, back a couple of years ago—I got out my Uniball and my Daler Rowney acrylic inks, and memorialized one of the victories for which President Biden and the Democrats can be proud. But no one should be prouder than Ketanji Brown Jackson, for an achievement this epic at the tender age of 51! She is the first, but may she not be the last, and may she render fair judgments for a good long career.

The likeness isn't perfect—her nose is a little longer than this, as is her chin, and I think her forehead is a bit narrower—but I do feel like I captured her palpable joy.

"Victorious KBJ"—Uniball Vision, Daler Rowney acrylic inks, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 (with a 1/2-inch border).

Attempting the abstract

 Our Let's Face It 2022 lesson this week was with Dina Wakley, who does a lot of abstract multimedia work, sometimes including figures and faces, oftentimes with collage, writing, and random printing/scribbling included. This is a hard one for me, but I gave it a shot.

I decided to add an extra something to her lesson by first employing a stenciled background before putting on the collage, and although it was initially intended as a kind of marbled sky look, it actually worked into my final concept, which was more a cyclone effect.

She suggested using some poses from fashion magazines to come up with the blocked-out painted figure of the person, which was probably a mistake for me, the literalist, because I added in clothing outlines instead of just sticking to the basic form. But I had fun with the collaged words and with the "ischemic" writing, which was a new term to me—it's basically giving the appearance of something written in cursive, but without including discernible words or language.

My final result felt to me like a person caught up in a storm of words, which was perfect considering I was having an extended and somewhat contentious discussion on Facebook at the same time as I was making this piece of "art."

"Cyclone"—stencil, gesso, collage, acrylic paints, Stabilo All, pen, on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

PHYAS inspiration

I was going to call this "PYHAS assignment," but it's far enough from the example that I figured I'd call it inspiration instead. The one in the lesson was done on canvas with acrylic paints, but I didn't have a small canvas and wasn't in the mood today to break out the acrylics (they are still sometimes a struggle for me), so I tried to mimic the assignment using watercolor and inks only, with limited success.

First of all, there were supposed to be stencils in the background and later in the foreground, but trying to do stencils using watercolor gives an inexact result unless you use them thickly and "pounce" them on with a flathead brush, which can defeat the purpose of them dropping to the background. So the swirly ones that comprise the light source worked pretty well, as did the splats behind her head, but the leafy branch turned into a hot mess.

I was a bit heavy-handed with the pencil and didn't remember to pick it up with my kneaded eraser before painting, so some of the pencil lines were preserved that shouldn't have been, notably the forehead line.

Finally, I broke out the gold paint to do her earring and then something came over me and I started splashing it around thinking it would work for the highlights, which it did not—it just proved a distraction.

So—oh well, it's a somewhat pretty picture that I will do better another time. I was happy with the effect of the stencil representing the light on her upturned face, especially the stripey bits; and I was okay with her hair, especially the tiny bits of green showing through.

"Basking"—pencil, watercolors, and acrylic inks on toned tan mixed media paper, approx. 9x12 inches.