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.