Me for real

My ego couldn't take it, so I did one that looks more normal, while still trying to be realistic and capture all of my features as they appear. This was right after a hair-washing, and in artificial light, so one side really showed up blonde-gold.

The mouth came out a lot more pursey than it actually was in the photo—instead of a wry smile it looks like I am smelling something bad—but I'm sure that this, too, is an expression familiar to my face, so I'll keep it!

ME4real
Uniball, watercolor, Bee sketchbook

Unflattering selfie day

Today, for some reason, I decided to paint a painfully accurate and therefore not so flattering portrait of myself. In looking back at some of the pictures I have painted of my friends, I realized that the thing most fun about painting them was to include every detail, warts and all, but that I have refrained from doing that when it comes to myself. So, friends, here is your revenge for my career of brutal portrait honesty.

I couldn't quite bring myself to paint a "straight" portrait, that is, with a normal expression, so I shot a few reactionary selfies. This is "dismay," which I registered after reading an article this morning revealing that Covid 19 triggers the body to make blood clots. My dismay is extreme, because I already have a tendency to create clots, and have been taking a blood thinner for some time now to guard against that! What else will come from this horrid virus?!

Sorry to be Debbie Downer. All the more reason to stay home (forever?). Anyway, here I am, warts and all. Tomorrow (or maybe later today), I'll go back to more upbeat topics. (No, I didn't cut my hair, it's back in a messy braid.)

"Me, dismayed"

Uniball pen, watercolor, in Bee sketchbook

Interesting perspectives

Today's effort for the "People reading" series was from a picture of my Facebook friend, Yevgenia, who sent me a photo of her reading a book while lying in a hammock. I wasn't initially drawn to it, because I didn't think there was enough of a background there, but the more I looked at it, the more I wanted to paint such an interesting perspective—a person lying horizontal and holding the book above her.

It definitely turned out to be a challenge, and I ended up having to rotate the photo and my paper in order to capture it properly! But I think I caught it pretty well, and I love the stripy hammock as background.

"Yevgenia Reads"
pencil and watercolor in Bee sketchbook

I wasn't planning to paint today—I had designated it as a chore day, and had a whole list lined up. But when my yard guy knocked on the door and told me that there was a leak in the main water line from my house to the street (mushy feet from stepping into the flower bed to weed), that pretty much changed the day to one of standing by while a plumber and his helper dug a trench in my front yard to replace my ancient (1948!) galvanized pipe with a copper one. So, since I couldn't leave the house, I painted.

They didn't finish, they'll be back tomorrow, so I may get another painting out of it if I can't use the water and I can't leave the house!

People reading in context

One person in my inner circle actually paid attention when I asked for reference photos in which they were reading a book from within a scene. Although I enjoy painting the close-up portraits of people and their books, I mostly want to paint pix of people in context of their daily life. Heidi sent me a good one, because it was also outdoors on her patio, which is not the usual for reading nooks.

My biggest regret with this one is that I didn't stop and think to do it on watercolor paper. I did it in my sketchbook, but because I'm including the entire scene, everything was fairly small, and it was hard to get good detail work on the sketchbook paper surface. I may end up doing this one again sometime. I entirely overworked some parts, while others are lacking subtlety because of the inability to shadow as well on this thinner paper.

I hope it's recognizably Heidi, even though it's small and hard to define features at that size. I did a little editing of the scene, including changing the fence and leaving out some objects for simplicity's sake. I also had to slightly redesign both the cover and the type content on the book—I always underestimate the amount of room needed to write things and have to simplify!

Pencil, micron pen (on book), watercolors, in Bee sketchbook.

Nemesis

Nemesis, thy name is Kirsti. As in, "the inescapable agent of someone's or something's downfall." In this case, mine. I keep trying to paint you, but somehow I never quite capture your apparently indefinable essence.

The first time, it was your birthday and I wanted to surprise you with a sketch. You were surprised; but it wasn't exactly positive, because no matter how hard I worked at capturing your expression, you ended up looking slightly, well, mental. Something about that tall forehead, and your eyes seeming a tiny bit crossways...

Today I decided to give it another try. You sent me a photo of you reading a favorite book, and even narrated a touching story to go with it, and I thought, Here's my chance to redeem the birthday photo! So I drew slowly, and I painted carefully, and I tried hard for a likeness and...I managed to paint a pretty picture of a girl reading, but somehow, she just isn't YOU reading.

The eyes are, once again, too close together, and possible too small; the nose is a touch too long, the lips a tad too lush.... I worked it, I played with it, I introduced and took out shadows, added more eye makeup, and...

Here is "Not Quite Kirsti," today's rendering for the "People reading" series. Maybe I will have to wait until you are old and wrinkly to get it?

Uniball pen, watercolors, Bee sketchbook.

People reading

I had really intended my "people reading" collection to consist of more generic pix, meaning an unspecified person in a bookish environment perusing an unnamed novel, like my girl in the wing chair from a few posts ago. It's hard to find models for these things, though, so two days ago I posted a notice on my Facebook page asking my friends and relations to send me pix of them reading.

What I ended up with was a bunch of head shots with people holding up specific books, and in some of them people were looking at the camera, not at the book. So I revised my directions to say Hey, give me context—a chair, a table, a lamp, a cup of tea—and look at the BOOK like you're actually reading it. No results yet, but in the meantime I decided, despite my initial plans, to go with a portrait of a "real" (i.e., named and recognizable) person reading a specific book.

This is Michael, with whom I worked back in the 1980s at The Advocate. I reconnected with him on Facebook through the agency of our mutual friend, Susan, and he has since been so complimentary about all my artwork, I decided to make him the subject.

I had big fun with this—I love his astounded expression as he reads his book (which is Clavell's Gai-Jin, sequel to Tai-Pan, title not included in the photo), and capturing his ice-blue eyes and the small details of the book cover. Thanks for the reference photo, Michael!

Perhaps I will intersperse more "real" and "specific" people and books in with my "scenes." These are fun!

Uniball pen, watercolor, Bee sketchbook.

Have some fun

The prompt is "have some fun," and enumerates movie theater, playhouse, arcade, music hall.
I chose to depict the last drive-in theater in the San Fernando Valley, the Van Nuys Drive-in. When it closed, it was the end of an era.

Kids today will never have the experience of piling into the back seat of the family car in their pajamas and driving with their parents to a big empty lot filled with painted parking spaces and short posts with detachable speaker boxes to see the latest movies on a giant screen lighting up the darkness. They will miss out on the swearing as their father tries to affix the speaker box to the rolled-down driver's window with a contrary clip that doesn't quite fit their car, and then complains about the staticky sound reception. They will never know the unbelievable thrill of being allowed to leave the car to journey halfway across the lot to the snack bar for popcorn and Coke. They won't remember falling asleep before the end of the movie and waking up as they are carried into the house to their beds. Of course, they also won't, as teenagers, have the experience of getting arrested for bringing in liquor, or make the mistake of begetting babies in that same back seat....

The Van Nuys Drive-in was a Pacific theater, opening on July 30, 1948 with the double bill of "Buffalo Bill" and "Wings of the Morning." The theater lot had a capacity of 891 cars, until it was subdivided into a tri-plex drive-in in June of 1983. Pacific Theatres closed the drive-in on September 2, 1996, leaving the message "closed for the season" on its marquee, but that season never arrived. The theater was demolished in the late 1990s.

This is one place I actually remember for myself; my then-husband Chuck and I moved to Van Nuys in our early 20s in 1981, and occasionally packed a root beer, a sandwich, and some peanut M&Ms and took in a double feature from the (front) seat of Chuck's old green station wagon. Although the sound was bad and the angle at which you had to hold your neck in order to get a proper view of the screen occasionally problematic depending on where you parked, there was nothing like watching a movie sitting on a comfortable upholstered bench seat but with all your windows rolled down to let in the warm summer evening. You could hear the distant murmur of other conversations and see the far-off group milling around the concession stand between movies, but you were alone in your own little world. The closest thing to this nowadays is the picnic-style movies they show starting at dusk at the Hollywood Forever cemetery, about which I have mixed feelings!

Pencil, micron pens, watercolor, in Bee sketchbook.