Opal Lee, the portrait

I guess I wasn't done with Juneteenth or with Miss Opal Lee; and this one came together pretty effortlessly. I wanted to incorporate the colors that represent Juneteenth, which are red, yellow, green, and black, so I did a tricolor stripe across the wet page as the underlayer. My original plan was to paint around the figure with black gesso once I was done with everything else, so that the other colors only appeared in the figure; but once I was done I decided that would be too dark, and anyway I liked what the colors were doing around the edges.

The saying is not something (that I am aware) that Opal Lee specifically said; but it's definitely true, given the persistence with which she has spoken up to get our government to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday.

"Juneteenth Opal"—Daler Rowney inks, pencil, watercolors, Uniball pen, Signo white gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Opal Lee and Juneteenth

My librarian friend Susan Minobe is always up on the latest news on the internet, and she posted an article about Opal Lee, the 94-year-old activist who walked for miles—literally and figuratively—for decades to bring attention to Juneteenth and petition for it to be a federal holiday. On Thursday, she was invited to the White House to see President Biden sign that dream into law.

For those who don't know what Juneteenth is: The slaves in Texas were not told they were free for two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed them. So General Gordon Granger and 7,000 black troops marched from New York and New Jersey to Galveston, Texas, and on June 19th, 1865, he read out General Order #3 that said all slaves are free, and proclaimed that the Emancipation Proclamation would be enforced. The day is also known as Jubilee Day; now it will be properly celebrated every year.

I saw this picture of Opal Lee on one of her many marches, and wanted to commemorate it by painting this picture for 30x30 Direct—no lines or drawing, just painting direct to the paper. The scene captured my imagination because of the variety of figures and the cast shadow beneath them.

"Juneteenth"—Paul Jackson watercolors in Bee mixed media sketchbook, about 7x5 inches.

Feeling my way

Today I wanted to try doing a semi-abstract background and then put a portrait on top of it. So I taped off parts of the paper, and on other parts I pressed bubble wrap to the ink to give texture, and I watered the ink here and there so it would run, and tilted the pad of paper back and forth to get it to go in different directions, and got a fun background. But who to put on it?

I went through a bunch of reference photos I recently downloaded from Unsplash, and this girl jumped out at me. I wanted the challenge of the extreme tilt of her face, with everything foreshortened and leading with her chin. I also loved her wild head of ringlets, and even the dress she was wearing.

So, I started working on her, using only ink at first; but I couldn't get some of it dark enough over the top of the intense colors in the background, so I looked around for a remedy. I had just received an order from Dick Blick that included a complete set of Conté "crayons," which are a little finer texture than straight charcoal but operate in much the same manner, and come in varying shades of brown, sepia, sanguine, noir, and white. And since the first challenge I was having was getting the highlights in her face to stand out, when the paper behind it happened to be dyed dark turquoise, I broke out the white one and, starting there, gradually went over most of her face with the varying shades. I haven't used charcoal since drawing class at Valley College in 1999, so I had to get used to a different kind of shading.

At first, I just painted her hair with Payne's Grey, but again, it wasn't strong enough against the background, so I went back in with the charcoal-colored conté, and pulled ringlets out, then smudged them with my finger. It ended up being a little too smudgy, so I tried some Elegant Writer, but it wouldn't activate much over the top of everything else, so I also accented the ends of the curls with my Uniball. Then I decorated her dress with the Uniball and some gel pens, and decided I had gone far enough!

The colors and textures  under the face and neck are a little weird, but I think it gives some extra personality. I don't have any fixitive, so I went over the hair with some more Payne's Grey, hoping to lock the charcoal into the paper, but I will eventually have to get some to seal off the face as well. I scanned it successfully, but had to wipe down my scanner glass after!

  

"Jamilah"—Daler Rowney inks, Conté crayons, Uniball pen, gel pens, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Week 24 with Meg Yates

In two weeks we will be halfway through this year of art, and although I haven't done every assignment, so far the investment in this class has been worth it, both for introducing me to new ideas and for simply keeping me painting.

This week's class was with a woman who is both artist and musician, and her painting was of she and her partner holding their guitars. I didn't want to paint the identical picture, so I decided to find a photo of a musician who spoke to me somehow, and went searching through unsplash.com, a great online resource for copyright-free photos provided as reference. 

I found this fellow, sitting on a bench in an unnamed city playing his saxophone, and was drawn to his pose, his setting, and the expression on his face, which it proved almost impossible to duplicate here in this small format. But I did my best, and considering that I know almost nothing about the basic structure of a saxophone, I think I at least did the idea of it justice as well.

I had hoped that this would be a bit looser and more evocative, but that's just not my style, no matter how much I may wish. I was pretty happy with the way the figure came out; less happy with the bench and tree, both of which I gave too much prominence for background objects. I didn't even try to include the building full of windows on the other side of the street—I know my limits. Someday, with practice, I will learn how to back things off properly so that I can balance the foreground and background.

"Sax Player"—pencil, Paul Jackson watercolors, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12. 

Expectations vs. reality

Today I decided to draw and paint from a black and white photo of a girl with an extremely delicate complexion, almost without either lines or shadows. I decided I would paint her as I have done a few others, by using only Payne's Grey for the shadows of her face, and possibly adding a little blush to the cheeks and lips.

What I didn't take into account is that the hair I designed based on her ringlets was too harsh in color(s) and too segmented to go with the delicate facial features. The hair simply overwhelmed the effect I was going for in the face—it needed to be paler, or at least less defined.

I then decided to add collage by using some polka-dotted tissue paper as material for her dress. I liked it; but the contrast with her hair was, again, all wrong, and the white and red fabric would have looked better on someone with darker (i.e., not stark white) skin. I attempted to bring it all together by adding in some reds and pinks in the rest of her features, but the result was still fairly pallid. Also, the fact that she has her eyes closed meant that I couldn't make those the focus of the picture, as I usually would, and so I had to rely on the other features for interest.

After adding a mix of Crimson and Payne's Grey in the background, I decided I was done and set it aside to dry, but I kept feeling dissatisfied with it. It lacked depth, it lacked character, it lacked pizzazz. So, I decided to mess about with it.

First, I added some Stabilo All pencil around the outside. The characteristic of this pencil is that if you wet it, it darkens and bleeds a little, so you can get a nice dark outline with it. But in this case, it didn't do much of anything for my picture. Also, while I had inked over the edges of the collaged dress, the edges were looking messy. So I ended up pulling out a black Elegant Writer pen, and going around the entire figure and also around the dress edges, then bleeding that out with water to give the figure and dress a nice dark outline and to give the hair a kind of halo.

It's not what I was planning; but I think I like it a little better with the changes I made. And experiments are how you find out what you like!

"Dottie"—Daler Rowney inks, Uniball pen, Stabilo All, Elegant Writer, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

30x Vista

 I was attracted to the reference photo because of the graduated layers of background—grass, road, more grass, sand, hill, sky—and the trees that pulled it all together.

The paper didn't like the amount of water I used in my Silver Black Velvet brush—it's happier with a tight, illustration-level painting—and as usual I had trouble conveying what I wanted to with the foliage. Trees are ridiculously hard to paint...at least for me. I never have gotten a feel for how much foliage should be defined and how much left amorphous and cloudy. But...I gave it a shot.

"30x21_Vista"—PJ watercolors in Bee mixed media sketchbook, 9x12 inches.

Back to 30x30

I decided to attempt a direct-to-paint picture of these geraniums highlighted against a window today. I didn't want to totally give up on the month's commitment so soon, and I was intrigued by the white light coming through the window vs. the darkness in the room, and how it made the flowers stand out.

The background was a little bit more defined than I painted it here, but I didn't want to get so fussy that it would detract from the shapes the geraniums make against the green background. I started too high on the page, so I couldn't include the dark of the room around the top. I was pretty happy with how I rendered the pots, but less happy with the variations in the leaves of the plants. And as usual, I had a few perspective problems with those shelves. But over all, I'm satisfied with it.

30x21_Geraniums, PJ watercolors in Bee mixed media sketchbook, 9x11 inches.

(Doesn't it seem like the plural of geranium ought to be gerania instead of geraniums?)