I Am Sassa

 I made the discovery on Facebook of an artist in, as she puts it on her website, "West by god Virginia," who has taken on an immense challenge. The day after Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, she was feeling low so she picked up her brushes and painted a portrait of the icon while listening to podcasts about her life. It made her feel so much better that she decided a big commitment was in order, so she thought, since there were exactly 100 days left until the end of the year, that she would challenge herself to paint a portrait a day! They are all "badass women," known for their accomplishments, their diplomacy, their artistry, including inventors, innovators, politicians, scientists, musicians, a little of everything.

Since she started the project she has received not only a lot of attention (including local television coverage) but a lot of suggestions for whom to include in the array, some with complete histories of their lives and accomplishments. She is keeping it spontaneous by choosing each morning who she will paint that day, and the paintings take from three to more than 12 hours apiece to complete, depending on their complexity, all while trying to live the rest of her life on the side. I have immense respect for this 39-year-old painter! (I often wonder what would have happened had I kept painting at 19 instead of deserting it until I was 45. This is a good example...)

I've been following the project and have had some online interaction with her, and I decided yesterday that she deserved to have her own portrait painted. So here is Sassa, another badass woman for the gallery.

Daler Rowney acrylic inks, pencil, Uniball Vision pen, India ink, Uniball Signo white gel pen, white gesso, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, 9x12.

Partners

 Today I decided that my farmer needed a wife, so I went looking for the quintessential woman for the job. I eventually decided on this one partly for the faraway look in her eyes that are used to looking out across fields, and partly because she has a sun bonnet like Grandmother Allie used to wear. Also like Allie, she has on one of those house dresses washed so many times that the flower pattern has faded to a vague white figure, and an apron with capacious pockets (not included here) to carry around such things as shears or rose pruners or a small trowel—whatever is needed for the job at hand.

I called this "partners" rather than spouses because farmers, male and female, are by necessity closer partners in their work than most urban or suburban couples, given that they both depend on the same thing for their livelihood. Although they may have tasks traditionally defined by gender, both are usually capable of doing any of their partner's tasks interchangeably, from hoeing a field to driving a tractor to milking a cow to cooking a pot of black-eyed peas.

This one was harder to paint than was her male counterpart. It seemed obvious that his face would be weathered and colored by the weather, but she with her bonnet would be paler and more protected, so the colors are softer and less defined. She also should have had a heavier shadow on the top half of her face from the shielding bonnet, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it! I tried to repeat enough of the colors I used on him, albeit in diluted form, so that the two portraits could be hung together. I think it worked...?

Pencil, Daler Rowney acrylic FW inks, watercolor, black Uniball Vision pen, white gel pen, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Angela again

 I painted Angela Davis's portrait once before, but that was when I was still striving for realism, so I decided to paint her again in my new style. I wanted it to be a sort of companion piece to James Baldwin, but not in the same colors I used for him, so I studied photos of her and decided on a color combination of yellow, orange, and purple. It wasn't that she ever dressed in those bright colors—quite the contrary, she seems to favor grays and greens—but that I saw something bright in her face that asked for them.

I went farther than I had planned with the hair treatment, and I really wish I had stopped where my first impulse said to, where it was more indicated and less specific. Her eyes are larger than in life, but that goes along with the new methods; I'm hoping that in this case it didn't render her less recognizable. Anyway, I guess the quote will take care of that, even if the likeness isn't perfect.

Daler Rowney inks, pencil, white gesso, Uniball Vision, white gel pen, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Back to basics

 I wanted to paint something tonight, but I wasn't led in any particular direction. Lots of people on my class site have been doing Inktober, which I avoid because I don't like just drawing in ink, I want to do full paintings, mostly, and also I never "feel" the prompts they offer. But I have to admit that I've been liking some of the more spare ink drawings I've been seeing, so tonight I decided to do a combination of pattern, spatter, and random line and let it all dictate a face for me. (I also didn't want to stay up until 2:00 a.m.!)

This is sort of going back to basics with what Deb Weiers teaches, with a combination of random background and blind contour drawing. I didn't do this one blind, but I did let the location of the lines and circles dictate the face. I also started drawing the connectors with my Uniball, but it was just too "civilized" next to the random stuff, so I drew the rest by dipping the wooden end of my brush in the ink and scrawling/scribbling with it. I had fun!

The red stuff at the top was an experiment that didn't work out very well. I had a piece of packing material that was a sort of diamond-patterned styrofoam-like webbing, and I thought it would be brilliant for texture to tape it down and paint through the holes; but because it's thick and bouncy, the ink connected with the material but not with the paper and didn't give a nice clean pattern. So I threw in some circles and shapes and outlined them to accentuate the red a little more.

Her name is Sukie, and her attention span is, shall we say, fluid at the moment...

Daler Rowney inks, India ink, gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper, approx. 9x12 inches.

Stand

 Malcolm X said "A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything." While he is not a specific hero of mine, and while I disagreed with a lot of his methods (and his religion), I believe Malcolm Little (his original name, ironically, considering the stature he achieved) was one of those who was willing to stand. To stand up, to stand firm, to stand for something when others would not. I came across that quote and it resonated, considering the two-faced duplicity and constant fickle changeability of more than half of our politicians at this present moment in history.

I believe we all need to decide where we stand and with whom, and take up that charge with seriousness and consistency, or we are all in danger of falling. The MAGA contingent has already done so, for a shyster who has stolen their money and their good will for his own benefit and given back nothing but false pride in a nonexistent superiority that only increases their hatred. Let us see their example, mind Malcolm's words, and find a different ground to stand on.

Gel pen, pencil, Daler Rowney inks, gesso, Paul Jackson watercolors, Uniball pen, white Signo gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper, 9x12.

"Real" men

 After painting the Terrible Triumvirate, I felt like I needed some kind of relief, that I needed to paint somebody normal, or maybe even someone heroic. I didn't know who that would be, though, so I pondered various icons I could choose, but nobody seemed just right. I opened up my Reference Photos folder and started clicking through it, looking for a face.

The face I found was that of a farmer, in a blue chambray shirt and overalls, with sun-dug wrinkles around his eyes, a white frosting of whiskers on his hollowed cheeks and chin, and a look that said simultaneously, I'm so worn out, and yet I'm looking at this blue sky and these fields and feeling satisfied. 

I come from a fairly long line of farmers, although nobody in my parents' generation stuck with it. My mom was the youngest of nine children, and by the time her parents passed when she was 10 and 12, her brothers and sisters had all left their truck farm in Virginia—some for the military (it was World War II), some to get married and start their own households—and there was no money left to keep things going. Others bought the farm, and she lived with a sister for a while, then married an Air Force guy and followed him around the globe for 20 years before settling in the "Inland Empire," otherwise known as Riverside, California.

My dad was the middle child of five, and although his parents owned a good-sized farm in Oklahoma, his mother had bigger plans for her children. The two eldest, the girls, went to school and became school teachers; Joe (my dad) ran off at 17 and joined the Army Air Corps; and the two little boys, 10 years behind the other three, also taught, one in high school and one in college. Grandmother and Granddad sold the farm and bought a couple of acres in town, where Allie grew corn and beans and strawberries and Granddad went to local auctions and spent their money on whatever took his fancy that week. So except for a few visits to their farm when I was very small, I was never immersed full-on in that life. My dad eventually retired from the Air Force and became a house builder, so I know more about dry wall and paint than I do about farming.

I did pick vegetables with Grandmother, I did can them, I did ride horses and feed chickens with Granddad, and I eventually learned to quilt (though long after I could have learned something from Allie, sadly), and I have a few fruit trees, an herb garden, some summer tomatoes, and a zucchini plant or two on my suburban lot, but that's the extent of my industry.

I think the farmers—particularly the ones who hold on year after year against the wiles of the major farming corporations trying to add more land to their empires—are heroic. It's a profession that is so dependent on random chance, on wind and weather being just right at the just right time, and no matter how hard they work or how carefully they plan, hoard seed, grow fodder, rotate fields, it can all be ruined by one torrential rain or one month of unseasonal heat. So it made me feel happy to paint this guy, who never wears a suit and tie except maybe on Sunday, and who listens to the land, and whose ambitions are small but more important to him and his neighbors and his customers than any exhibited by the Triumvirate in their halls of injustice. I hope he has the sense to vote for the right person in this election, knowing that he is one of those who will receive help and comfort.

Pencil, Daler Rowney inks (Scarlet, Indian Yellow, Purple Lake), gesso, Paul Jackson watercolors, Uniball pen, India ink, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Just men

 I was thinking about the overweening greed and ambition of certain members of our government tonight, and also about how much harm they have been able to do in the four short years in which they have been calling the shots. I felt the need to remind myself that they are not all-powerful in a forever sense, but have only been able to take foul advantage of the temporary situation in which they found themselves. Although they are master manipulators, they have also benefited from sheer luck, i.e., a narrow party majority, and as soon as that party majority is gone, so will be their advantage. I said to myself, reassuringly, "They are just men, like any others."

And then I thought about that statement and realized that I would need to clarify, because although they are just men, they are not just men. They do not play fair, they do not honor their word, they are hypocrites of the first order and will say and do whatever it takes to keep their power, their privilege, their control. So no, they are not just men. But they are only men, and someday—soon—they will fall.

Also, they all have thin lips.

Gel pen, Daler Rowney inks (Indian Yellow and Burnt Umber), pencil, Uniball pen, Paul Jackson watercolors, white gel pen, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, 9x12.