The electronic critic

Something I have recently discovered is that once you scan something and put it up on the computer screen, all is revealed! What is it about the electronic eye that sees every flaw when the human eye can't? It's frustrating.

I painted a portrait today for a Secret Santa exchange (yes, I know I'm late, but we have until Jan. 11th to get it there), and was completely satisfied with it...until I scanned it and saw that one side of her face was noticeeably flatter/thinner than the other, that her mouth wasn't at quite the right angle, and that I needed to reshape a couple of teeth to look like her actual smile. So, I picked it back up off the scanner, and filled in the cheek, re-slanted the top lip a little, and fixed her teeth, and now, at last, I think I have a good likeness.

It was supposed to be a $15 value, but it was also supposed to encompass "what you do" as a "creative," and this is what I do...so Angie's getting a portrait.

No worries about her seeing this unless I call it to her attention; it was a random draw-a-name exchange on Instagram, and I don't know her from Adam. And I used a screenshot from a video she posted as my source photo. But I hope that when she receives it she is pleased with her little Christmas portrait.

"Angie"—pencil and acrylics and Stabilo (brown) on watercolor paper, 8.5x11 inches. I used one of my abstract backgrounds because she is already quite a pink young lady, from Toledo, Ohio!

Pensive

I was looking up some poetry for someone today and came across a photo of Anaïs Nin in an uncharacteristically pensive pose, with face propped on hand. It was black and white, but based on a few color photos of her I was able to get a general idea of her hair color at this point in her life (earlier and later she must have dyed it dark/black, I think, because it was so radically different), and I extrapolated the rest based on the light in the photo.

I also, of course, used my leftover-paint background as a basis for the color palette. These paintings are a little pale and a little pink sometimes, but for this particular painting the colors seemed appropriate. I'm enjoying this sort of scrubby painting method I'm using on these.

I thought about breaking out some gold/gilt paint for the necklace, but decided it would take away from the otherwise extremely matte feel of this, so I stuck with paint. Naples Yellow is an extremely versatile color, working for blonde hair, gold jewelry, and some skin tones as well. 

"Anaïs"—pencil, acrylic paints, and a little Stabilo All pencil in brown, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

The power of suggestion

I am enjoying the employment of random backgrounds to suggest the subject matter for each next painting. I don't know how much longer I will pursue this trend, but it's fun to use the leftover paint from the previous work to create a new background that in turn dictates the kind of painting that will be made next.

After I painted Leonor Fini, the colors I mostly had left over were all the ones used for her skin tones—Naples Yellow, Titan Mars Pale, and some Magenta. I used them to make a new background, but wondered what I would do with one so relentlessly, well, PINK. Today, though, I browsed my saved reference photos and found one of a wonderful old lady with bright blue eyes, wrapped up in a hat and fur coat and standing in front of a gray coastline. Her face was such a beautiful combination of white, pink, and a little pale blue/lavender that I knew I had found today's subject. Here's an early "process" photo to show how I started.

As I did with the others, I almost used the paint more as a stain than as an opaque coating, allowing the background to show through or at least to dictate what I used on top of it so as to preserve its effect.

I didn't reproduce the cold gray background because I liked keeping this one, but I did incorporate a little turquoise (after I used it to mix her eye color) to drop it back a bit and give it a more delicate sunrise feel.

I also didn't paint in all of her many wrinkles, but rather tried to convey their presence by both the face shapes and the directionality of some of the paintbrush strokes. I could have done more detail, but I think the idea of age is sufficiently conveyed here by the depth of the eyelids, the gently sagging cheeks and jaws, and some of the facial creases.

I wish I had thought ahead to give a better impression of the hat and coat as fur, but I was primarily focused on them as a frame for her face, so they are fairly matte.

"Pink Lady"—pencil, acrylics, and a little Stabilo All, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

And I have another background made from her leftovers for another day.

Overlooked artists

Today's subject, painted over yesterday's leftover substrate, is a young Leonor Fini, photos of whom I found on the internet without knowing who she was. Turns out she was a powerful surrealist artist who painted some really interesting stuff. She also designed costumes and sets for the Paris Opera, and dressed herself as dramatically as if she were a part of one of those productions; she wrote three novels in later life, as well as illustrating many works by the great authors and poets, including Poe, Baudelaire, and Shakespeare, as well as texts by new writers. She painted many portraits of the famous and socially prominent, her last being a portrait of Paul and Linda McCartney, which was rejected by their agent as being "too precise and too sad."

She was born in Buenos Aires in 1907 of Argentinian/Italian ancestry, but spent much of her life and career in Paris. When she was a teenager she had an eye disease that forced her to wear bandages on both eyes; when she recovered, she decided she would become an artist and moved to Milan at age 17 and then to Paris in her 20s, in pursuit of that.

She had many lovers, for some of whom she served as a muse, and steadfastly avoided marriage and motherhood, living for much of her life in Paris and in the Loire Valley with two lovers (one artist, one writer), two assistants (who also acted as concierge and housekeeper), and up to 23 Persian cats. She actively worked through her art to subvert the roles imposed upon women by society, abandoning images of women who were fragile and innocent in favor of female figures who couldn't be categorized or sexually defined.

Despite her successes and exhibitions, Salvador Dali dismissed her work as "better than most, perhaps, but creativity is in the testicles." (One wonders if Dali's was the body on the table depicted by her in "The Anatomy Lesson." All the girls and women are looking at him with a degree of disgust surely deserved by that remark!)

Leonor Fini died in 1996. Despite her prolific career, the Centre Pompidou Collection du Musee d'art Moderne in Paris contains just one painting by Fini, a portrait from 1932. It also contains a dozen photographic portraits of her by Man Ray. This is a final slap in the face for yet another marvelous artist who happened to be a woman. It makes me want to paint her over and over, to extend the memory of her life and career!

As I did with yesterday's portrait, I let the background show through this, and dictate most of the colors I used. (I think her eyes were probably brown in life.) "Leonor Fini"—Posca pen and acrylic paints on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Don't waste paint

I haven't posted any art for 10 days because I haven't been able to paint. I went in a week ago last Wednesday to the podiatrist to get him to remove a small piece of glass from the bottom of my foot (in the arch right in front of the heel). I had broken a drinking glass in the kitchen about a year ago and, walking around barefoot in the summer, managed to pick up a stray piece in my foot that the broom didn't find. I immediately went to Urgent Care, where they numbed the foot, tweezed out the piece of glass, put on a Bandaid, and that was an end of it. Except that over the past few months I discovered there was still some glass in there. Perhaps it was deeper and had gradually migrated back up to the surface? but now I was feeling it when I pressed down on the spot or set my foot down unwarily, so I wanted to get it out of there.

Turns out, though, that there was no glass; instead, my foot had created a "plantar keratosis" in the spot where the previous piece of glass had been removed. So the doctor cut it open a lot wider than he had planned and removed the keratosis, and then he gave me six stitches, a bandage, a wrap, a sock, a boot, and a prescription for antibiotics, and told me it would take three to four weeks to heal! Talk about throwing a wrench into the Christmas season—not only has it been difficult to get around on it, but if I don't keep it elevated for a good part of the day, it hurts. So sitting at my desk painting for a few hours at a time hasn't been an option.

I have had one bandage change now, however, and taken all the antibiotics, and it's doing better. So I decided yesterday that I would paint a picture as a gift for someone. I painstakingly laid down a grid on the page so that the drawing would be accurate, then did the base drawing and started to paint, but after more than two hours' work it was turning into the most dreadful thing I have ever attempted, and I decided not to waste any more time on it.

That is a really long explanation to get me to the title of this blog post, which is  about not wasting paint.

The one thing that Emma Petitt says at least once and usually several times during every lesson is "don't waste paint." If you have a little white paint left, go back and hit your highlights one more time. If you have another color that goes with something in your painting—hair, background, clothing, whatever—then take your paintbrush and slap it in there. Leave that palette bare by the end!

Since I just started painting with acrylics this year, however, I haven't yet got good judgment about how much paint it takes. I inevitably either run out and have to add more, or overestimate from the beginning and have a bunch left of at least one but usually three or more colors. So since one of the tricks I have also picked up from Emma is creating interesting abstract backgrounds over which to paint my portraits, I am now making it a habit to pick up a pad of paper and my brayer (roller) at the end of the current painting and use the remaining paint on my palette to create the next background. Sometimes they turn out well, and sometimes they sit for a while before I can figure out how to use them, but either way, I feel relief that I'm not throwing away expensive art supplies!

So last night, when I gave up on that painting, I had paint left on my palette, and I used it for a new background. There were a lot of colors, and it came out pretty dark and intense; but there were some nice combinations and juxtapositions. This morning I gave up on sleep at 5 a.m. and got onto the computer to write a review of the book I finished at 1:00 before going to sleep; then I made myself some breakfast, did a few light chores, and thought about what to do for the rest of the day. The chores made sitting down for a while a necessity, and my eye was drawn to that new background. 

The other thing I have learned with the abstract backgrounds (this from Deb Weiers) is to look and see if there is already a "picture" contained within them, just waiting to be released. Sure enough, this one had a face and a couple of pseudo-Princess-Leia buns (that ended up translating to giant blossoms) staring out at me. So I looked around for a reference photo that would work, and found a dark-visaged girl with her features at the appropriate angle who was begging to be my model.

This is a little different from most I have done, in that I was so reluctant to cover up the interesting background that I did minimal coverage with the paint. Instead of using a big brush with broad strokes, I used a fairly tiny one and did almost a dry-brush effect on the face, using small dabs of paint and scrubbing them into the surface so that the underlayer wouldn't be completely obscured. Then I did the opposite on the clothing, by using a large brush with a thinned-out coat of paint that would darken without blotting out the underlayer. Between the two, I'm happy with her emergence from but lack of contrast with the background.

I also wanted a more definitive line than my usual Uniball, given the dark and challenging background, so I used a black Posca pen, which I think worked well. I'm pretty happy with her—and yes, I used the leftover paint for my next background!

Posca Pen and acrylic paints on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Last LFI2021

It's been quite a year, doing Let's Face It 2021, and now it's over! I haven't done all of the lessons (maybe half?), partly because some were charcoal or pencil only, which didn't interest me, and partly because I got distracted by other classes and went off on those tangents for a good part of the year. But it was worth it, even doing just 25 of the 49 lessons, and I have signed up for 2022. I have also signed up for Paint Your Heart and Soul 2022, likewise a year-long class, so that I can choose whether to do one or the other or both lessons per week and discover yet more teachers with whom I would love to study! And of course I have a few leftover lessons from more in-depth classes that I need to go back and complete, and a few I haven't even looked at yet, and a couple of commissions... I think 2022 will be another busy art year!

Anyway, our last lesson this week for LFI 2021 was with Danielle Mack, and was an exercise to paint two women together in one frame, supposedly combining them from separate, individual photos. I didn't exactly adhere to that plan, because I was reading a review this morning of the new Paul Verhoeven film, Benedetta, and when I saw the picture of the two nuns, one peeking from behind the shoulder of the other, I had to paint them. Danielle was making a statement about woman power, and I'm not sure these lesbian nuns fit the description, but they were definitely risk-takers, given that it was the 17th century!

I did fulfill the assignment as far as drawing and watercolor went, and I abstained from adding any additional mixed media details with the exception of the rosary, for which I used my silver gel pen. But otherwise all watercolor, and mostly done with my loose and sloppy brush, somewhat in the mode of Fiona di Pinto, putting in the darks first and coming back in with the lighter colors. I'm pretty happy with it, although as usual I forgot to allow for borders. The faces are a little long, compared to the originals, but not horribly out of proportion. I just failed to get the slightly up-tilted chin on the front nun. Otherwise, not bad.

"Benedetta"—pencil and watercolor on Fluid coldpress watercolor paper, 12x9 inches.

The beauty of substrate

Ever since taking Emma Pettit's class, I am super conscious of paint usage. Her continuing mantra throughout her painting process is "Don't waste paint!" to the point where she will say, "Just take whatever is left on your brush and scrub it over the surface to give you some nice texture—use it all up!"

So, when I finished a painting session on the recent large figure portrait of Johnny and George and had a bunch of colors left sitting on my palette, instead of balling up the page and throwing it out, I got out a 9x12 piece of watercolor paper and my brayer (roller) and made a background (substrate) to use for a future painting.

The problem with these backgrounds Emma teaches is that sometimes they are so pretty that you don't want to cover them up! I didn't expect the combination of Naples Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Lemon Yellow, and a little bit of Payne's Grey to mix so agreeably, but when I was done, I thought Ooh! What can I paint on this without covering it all up?

My solution was to impose an image taken from a black-and-white photo, and only paint the lights and darks, leaving the substrate to show through for all the neutral parts.

I'm not sure whether I feel like this is a success; for one thing, since the light was coming from behind her, the biggest highlight in the entire photo was the neck, which is always an awkward place to put such definitive white strokes and leave them unblended! It probably would have been better painted in inks or watercolor, but I wasn't sure I could even do that, over the top of an acrylic background, so...white and Payne's Grey acrylics, and a dark blue Stabilo All pencil for a few defining strokes.

"Substrate Woman," 9x12 inches.

And then, of course, I had white and Payne's Grey left over, so now I have a new substrate...