A reader

I haven't painted anyone in the act of reading for a good long while, but I want to keep doing that and building up my collection of avid readers in art, so I found a reference photo I'd been saving and went to work tonight. I was only going to do the drawing, but the rest of my house was so cold and my studio was so warm (space heater rotating on 75 degrees!) that I started painting at 9:30 and quit at 12:30 when I felt about 80 percent done, with only the hands to paint and then some tweaking of everything else. Probably needless to say, I spent a lot more time on it this morning than anticipated, with the result that it's way past time for lunch!

I tried to leave this one more loose and painterly—the view out the window, which was mixed blues and greens with some yellow and white highlights, lent itself to a soft focus, so I tried for that in the foreground as well. I painted the board sky blue as an underpainting, and initially intended to do this one as a Flo Lee, with the ground left in the face, but then decided the theme didn't lend itself to that, so I simply left bits of blue to peek out here and there, in her hair, and robe, and hands. I used a stencil for the wallpaper and was fairly pleased with that, though it's busier than I intended to go.

This one is "Lizzie Reads"—let's see if anyone can figure out why. Pencil, stencil, and acrylics on 1/8th-inch birch board, 12x16 inches.

Layers

Two months later, and I finally convinced myself to make some art. I don't know what happened—a combination of that dratted heat wave with the beginning of my UCLA Readers' Advisory class on the first of October that necessitated a lot of preparation, before and during, to bring it all up to date after a two-year hiatus and some previously undiscovered research on next-level RA just took me out of the painting mindset, and even though I have had time here and there, I just kept playing Words with Friends and binge-watching series on Netflix.

At first I didn't think I would care to assay this week's lesson; although I greatly admire Maria Pace-Wynters's highly colored and beautifully intricate works, I know myself well enough to know I don't have the patience for all of that eensy-weensy detail. But I was itching to try a few of her techniques, and my friend Phoebe, who did the lesson in a greatly simplified but still gorgeous manner, made me decide to get over myself and give it a shot.

Maria's first layer is collage, and although I didn't have the beautiful scraps of paper she has saved up over decades for this purpose, I did have some fun patterned tissue papers lying around, so I did my best with those, applying them to my birch board with acrylic medium. Then I added some glossy acrylic spray in turquoise and orange, and let the first step dry overnight.

The next step was to draw my image, which I took (with her permission) from @DUHHCID (Jenell Del Cid)'s Instagram page. I thought that I had recently "discovered" her, and asked her permission to paint her, but later found an old Sktchy portrait of her from about 2.5 years ago that I painted for the 30-day challenge (it's so bad I won't even show it here!), so that was funny. Anyway, Maria used a profile reference and incorporated flowers, so I settled on a profile photo of Jenell contemplating a tiger lily, and got to work.

Yesterday I did the pencil sketch and then got caught up in other "life" stuff and didn't get back to it, but this morning I was determined to make some progress, so after medicating Gidget (and parenthetically, why would anyone think it was a good idea to make antibiotic drops for cats look and smell like Bazooka bubble gum?) and eating some oatmeal, I squeezed out a bunch of colors onto my palette and got to work about 10 a.m.

Following Maria's example, I started with her characteristic stark white face and worked outward from there. I usually go for more realistic tones, but I do love the contrast of the white-white skin with the red cheeks and Phthalo Turquoise shadows—rather Renoir-esque. I stopped at this point to take a photo, because I realized I hadn't documented the drawing stage. After that, I got so caught up in the painting that I forgot completely about my camera until I was nearly done, and decided to let it go until I could scan the finished piece.

After doing the face, I followed her example by painting in most of the background so as to get definition around my image, and this is where I ran into trouble. Those pesky pieces of tissue didn't stick to my board with the application of acrylic medium the way Maria's did to her work; I'm wondering if she had a base coat of something underneath, because they just did not want to adhere to the raw board, and kept peeling up. I looked in vain for my bottle of Elmer's to glue it down, so I ended up lifting off and discarding a couple of significant-sized pieces, including all but two of the big gold dots that I thought would look cool shimmering through; but I managed to get the confetti tissue to stick pretty well, so that at least stayed. I like how it comes up out of the top of her head and also surrounds the tiger lily, as if the lily provoked thoughts that are flying out of both of them at once.

I was much happier with the image of Jenell than I was with the tiger lily; I'm not particularly adept at painting flowers. But after doing a rather flat rendering, I was inspired by Maria's exhortation to spread all the colors all around the painting to promote unity, so I picked up some of the Phthalo Turquoise on my brush and used it for the darkest shadows on the lily stem and leaves, which greatly enhanced the contrasts, and then threw some into her hair as well, and darkened the shadows of the blouse.

One of the last things I did was to use a stencil with a nearly dry brush of white paint to create the lace ruffle collar and jabot. It wasn't exactly as I envisioned it, but I like how it turned out, and that the flowers reflect the approximate shape of an open lily, to echo the main feature.

I thought about doing some outlining with white (or black) as Maria does, but ultimately decided to leave this soft and diffuse and not get fussy, since it's not my talent. 

I got so caught up painting that I worked straight through the lunch hour and finished up about 4:00, then picked at tiny details, scanned, and posted. I really enjoyed this lesson! Maybe I won't wait so long between this and the next.

"Jenell with Lily"—pencil, collage, and acrylic on 1/8th-inch birch board, 12x16 inches.

HEAT

If ever I doubted the whole principle of global warming, this past almost-month of truly horrifying temperatures would have convinced me of its existence.  As a San Fernando Valley dweller, you know you will be in for a couple of weeks in August and maybe one in September of triple-digit weather, but I don't remember ever having such a prolonged, intense, unwavering run of hot weather, and I have lived here for 45 years. As a person who lives in a 1948 bungalow without air conditioning (I have an evaporative cooler on the roof with triple vents into the house), it's been mind-numbing. I have always liked my swamp cooler better than air conditioning, because it infuses a little dampness into the air rather than drying out my sinuses as central air can do, and also it's way more environmentally friendly and way less expensive than central air. But this summer has truly tested my resolve.

So today, after three increasingly hot days that never cooled below 80 degrees at night (meaning my house likewise didn't throw off its accumulated weight of heat during the night), I finally gave in and trekked across the valley to my own personal cooling center, aka the cousins' house in Woodland Hills. They do have central air, and they also set me up in a nice upholstered chair in the living room, with a footstool for my lymphedema-prone legs and a small table nearby furnished with a frequently refilled glass of iced tea, and I can sit in a blissfully temperate clime and read my book, I can nod off if I want, and if I get bored with sitting and reading, I can go hang and visit with one or both of them. Add to that a "catered" lunch and dinner (me being the one catered to), and you can hardly beat it. I try not to take advantage of this option too often, but today it was a lifesaver, and I stayed from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. I'd be there for the next four days until it "cools down" to 90 degrees if it weren't for my cat at home alone in my stuffy little house! (She's fine.)

Halfway through the afternoon I finished reading my current book and felt too restless to start the next one (although it was waiting on my Kindle); one cousin was napping on the sofa, while the other was working at her remote job on the computer in the den, so I hauled out my sketchbook and did a little "urban sketching" (hey, it may be an interior of a house, but that house is in Los Angeles, so it counts as urban!). I greatly admire the detailed interiors of artist Steven Reddy (and own a couple of his books), so I just sat tight in my comfy chair and sketched what was directly in front of me, including my own image in the big mirror on the wall. Not everything is in the best proportion (I'm too big, as are the lamps, in comparison to the sofa!), but everything was rendered pretty faithfully. I didn't take my paints, so I added the watercolor once I got home.

"House of Cos"—Uniball pen and watercolors in Bee mixed media sketchbook, 8x8 inches.

Color

I thought I would have a new project to post a lot sooner, but I have spent the past three days trying to mix the proper green for the background of this one, getting closer with each mix but taking three coats of paint to finally find it. It's still not perfect, but it's the closest I'm going to get. Greens are tough! and not even the professionals agree on particular shades. I looked up "spruce," which is the color most accurate to what I wanted, and the variations started at olive and shifted through the green and blue tones to kelly and sage. This is blue spruce, and may be a shade on the teal side of that, but I am finally pleased with it.

I think the reason why I am so fixated on this ground-as-element style of painting that I learned from Flo Lee is that my obsession is and has always been color. I have friends who make gorgeous paintings with white gesso, black charcoal, and maybe a bit of colored pencil and, while I admire them intensely and often say Oh! I wish I had done that! somehow I never manage to stick with even the intention of experimenting with that style, if it has to compete with a full-color rendering.

This one was more complex than some of the "ground" paintings, because the background is a dark, intense color so anything superimposed on it was a big shift in value, and I had to be careful not to either under- or overdo the painting. My tendency is usually the latter (I don't know when to quit), so I sternly admonished myself not to be too fussy before I even started. Yeah, right.

You almost have to use a grid on these paintings, because they are on birch board, which is a lot rougher and more textured, even under a coat of gesso and three of paint, than is a canvas or a piece of paper and, since you're drawing with charcoal, it's hard to rub out when it gets down into the grooves, should you make a mistake. I discovered that gridding with white charcoal is a lot easier to "lose" afterwards; I have erased as much of it as possible, but you can still see some faint white lines. But they are not nearly as intrusive as is black.

I considered skipping one of Flo Lee's steps on this one: She goes in after she has made the charcoal drawing and smudges the parts she wants to show up as dark, using some hairspray (or spray fix) to wet the charcoal and make it spreadable; but there are so many large dark areas in this particular painting that I thought I would just do all of them with paint instead of messing with the charcoal. Although I have made six of these paintings so far, only on two of them did I feel like the charcoal step was effective, and in both cases it was because the subjects had short, choppy hair in a dark hue that showed up nicely against the background. But I went back and looked at some of the others and ultimately decided that there's nothing that looks quite the same as the dark of the charcoal, so I went ahead and smudged a few areas—which I also revisited with paint.

This painting was so challenging. It was too easy to underestimate the effects of a light color on that extremely dark background, and I did a lot of scrubbing off with a finger or a paper towel before getting the mixes just right. I somehow made the eyes too large, but managed to reduce them a bit when I saw my mistake. The glasses went in almost last; I had to complete everything under them before laying them over the top.

The pattern on the dress is a new stencil that saved the day. The reference photo model had on a dark green dress with flowers in shades of peach, rose, and turquoise, and I initially intended to try to duplicate it, but the colors and pattern proved too intrusive, fighting for attention with the face and hand, so I decided to go for this simple brocade look by using a stencil and different shades of darker and lighter green/turquoise.

I thought about lightening up the background behind her, but I liked the emergence of the hand from that dark background too much to mess with it further. I hope the idea that she is leaning against a wall is conveyed by the shadow and the angle of her body!

"Brunette with Specs"—charcoal and acrylic on 1/8th-inch birch board, 12x16 inches.

Basking

I have wanted to paint this model for some time, but it wasn't until I did a search for her under "Redhead" (I have a bunch of those) that I realized I had actually already painted her, about a year ago—a quick and somewhat crude watercolor for the annual July "30x30 Direct Watercolor" challenge. That challenge is to paint 30 paintings in 30 days that are direct to paper, that is, no underdrawing at all, just painting what you see.

Now that I have started painting with acrylics, I thought it would be fun to try her again, in the ground-as-skintone method I learned from Flo Lee, and since I had just received a shipment of thin birch boards from Dick Blick, this seemed like the time. I was inspired by the light, and by the orange sherbet-colored background from which she emerges.

I realized, in looking at the watercolor, that I didn't do a great job of catching the angle of her head tilt, so I tried to do better at that when I got to the charcoal portrait, with the result that I painted over the face a couple of times—I have as much trouble with these weird face angles as I do with architectural perspective! and even with a grid, it was tough. But I finally got one that satisfied me, and started painting.

It's weird how not painting for even a week hinders your abilities. I was at such a loss for where to start that I went back and re-watched part of Flo's lesson on LFI 2022 to remind me how she went about it. But I was soon back in the groove, and staring at all the small details, deciding which to include. I'm really happy with parts of this and, as usual, it's the parts that weren't intended that are my favorites. I planned an entirely different treatment for her tank top,
but when I put in the highlights with Naples Yellow, it felt both distinct and organic, so I went with it.

I was less sure about the varicolored background behind her—I was afraid it was too busy. But I got positive feedback from two different people to whom I showed it, so I left it. That flat colored background on the "Flo method" is the one thing that occasionally bothers me, because the foreground is so nuanced, so I decided with this one to vary it a bit.

"Basking Redhead"—charcoal and acrylics on 12x16-inch thin birch board.

Surf the World

I haven't felt much like painting lately, but this week's Let's Face It 2022 lesson was with one of my favorites, Emma Petitt, and it looked like a fun one, so I jumped in. Mine didn't turn out anything like hers; I went much more realistic with my figure, but I did create a gorgeously rich substrate that was a big part of the exercise and what made this special.

The substrate was created by brayering on three different colors (in layers, allowing them to dry in between), and then going over them with stencils. The object was to create one of Emma's "beach babes," this one specifically a surf babe (finished example by Emma at right), so I found a stencil that felt like waves to me and used it liberally with beautiful Amsterdam Turquoise-Green paint.

  

This was really fun to create, and I was pretty happy with it. Emma and I share a love of color, and my favorite combination is orange, purple, and turquoise. There's some Payne's Grey in there, too, to give a nice dark contrast.

The next task, which I didn't photograph because you couldn't really see it, was to grid my selected reference photo (thanks to @dinoopis for that, and also to Heike Kurtenbach for bringing her to my attention) onto the canvas and do the drawing. I started at 5 a.m., did it once, got the grid too big and ran out of room for her feet, so I erased it and did it over, finishing at about 8:30. Took a break for breakfast, and then started painting.

Emma's babes are much more stylized and exaggerated, and while I did go into this meaning to do the assignment (with my own model) more or less the way she did, I ended up painting a much more realistic interpretation of the figure (although I did use her painting methods), and was so reluctant to cover my pretty background that I ended up leaving most of it as is. I darkened part of the background, and went over the rest of it with some turquoise cut with white to knock back the intensity of the pattern and put water-like swishes and swashes over the top. The colors are slightly lighter than what shows in the photo, but I couldn't get it any closer than this in Photoshop.

I was trying for the idea that she's about to stand up on a surfboard that is partially covered by water, but because her feet and hands are painted over the top of the water, it turned out looking more like she's standing in the middle of a puddle (an ocean?) on the rounded horizon of the earth! But I'm okay with that.

"Surf the World"—acrylic paints and stencils on 16x20-inch canvas.

Russian resistance

My painting tonight is of Alla Gutnikova, one of four former editors of the publication DOXA, a Russian student-run journal publishing anti-war and anti-government material, currently considered one of the most active, reliable, and popular sources of information about the war in Ukraine. The four editors were put on house arrest in April 2021 for posting a three-minute video expressing support for students threatened with expulsion for participating in anti-government protests; they were sentenced this past April to two years of collective labor.

I was initially attracted to her image (in addition to her work as an editor, she also models), and then read up on her, which made me want to paint her even more. She is only 23, but is astonishingly literate and bravely outspoken; I'd like to quote her entire final speech she made at her trial, in which she both speaks from her own heart and also quotes some amazing people, but it's very long, so I'll just feature these quotes:

Tarkovsky speaks in the words of Lao Tzu:

“The most important thing is that they believe in themselves and become as helpless as children. Because weakness is great and strength is null. At birth people are supple and weak; at death, they are tough and stiff. When trees grow they are soft and flexible, and when they become dry and hard, they die. Stiffness and strength are the concomitants of death; softness and weakness express the freshness of being. Thus what has grown hard will not conquer.”

Mahmoud Darwish says:

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others
(do not forget the pigeon’s food).
As you conduct your wars, think of others
(do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others
(those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others
(do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
(those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
(those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
(say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).

And in her own words, "Freedom is the process by which you develop a practice for being unavailable for servitude."

If you'd like to read the entire speech, it's here.

She was even paler of complexion than I managed to preserve in this painting, but I got a little carried away with the subtleties of color in her face. My scanner cut off about a half inch at both top and bottom (it scans 9x11 and this is 12x12).

"AllaGutnikova"—gesso, stencil, and Paul Jackson watercolors on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, 12x12 inches.