Vincent is perfect. I'm not.

Hello all!

As I begin this posting, it has been 46 days since my last blog; as many of you know, at the end of September, my husband made the decision to move his office, our house sold, and we have moved into a work/live loft space in the downtown of our small town's commercial district.  The move, consolidation of the office and our home, huge estate sale and final closing all are, at last, over.  We are mostly settled in, loving our space, and enjoying the stimulating and creative new environment that greets us each morning.  Finally, I can turn my attention away from the move, and refocus my energies on my art lessons with Vincent.

From the moment I had announced my hiatus, I had been itching to paint.  As I packed up the things we wanted to keep, and decided which items were most expendable, my mind kept circling back to painting.  What seemed like hundreds of ideas kept running through my head - new techniques to try, or color combinations that I wanted to see together, or which painting I would do first in my new studio.

The move was making me feel energized and inspired.  Making all of the decorating and logistical decisions didn't drain me of creative energy, rather it seemed to be feeding it.  I felt like I was conducting a big and energetic orchestra with Vincent rehearsing as the first chair in the art section.  With every cabinet I emptied, and every box I carried up the stairs, I felt I was one step closer to ripping open and attacking a blank white canvas.  I could not wait to paint!

So why wasn't I painting?  After all, I was doing everything else; shopping for furniture, arranging kitchen cabinets, making new curtains, walking dogs, chatting with new neighbors, watching TV.... There was plenty of time for Words with Friends, and even the oh so addictive Draw Something, but the real question was, why wasn't I painting?

I had arranged the studio almost immediately after we moved in.  I then rearranged and re - rearranged again to get everything in just the right place.

I put my desk in front of a sunny, east facing window that looks out over the downtown and then beyond to tree covered hills on the other side of bridge.  I can see the cars coming and going, and enjoy watching the pedestrians sauntering, strolling, and occasionally hurrying their way past the stores, restaurants, and the coffee shop.

Just opposite the window, I put my "egg" chair and ottoman, which is always piled with art books and sketch pads.  It is a comfortable place to read and doodle, and is an enjoyable spot for watching the ever changing Texas sky.  Next to the chair is my china cabinet, filled with my beloved rummage sale dishes and the water glasses my mother and her siblings gave to their mother as gifts during the Depression.  Each year at Christmas, one, beautiful, cut crystal goblet was presented; I was lucky enough to get the nine that remain.

From the office, I inherited two banks of drawers, as well as large and small shelves, and they have been outfitted with all of my art supplies - all neatly arranged, accessible, and ready to use.  Although you can't see them, the puppies are snoozing doggedly in the carrier in the foreground...  They seem to have no trouble re-embracing their life's work, even in this new setting.

 My easel fits neatly into the corner between my desk and supply drawers; It is clipped with lights, at just the right height, and is positioned to offer an over the shoulder view right up Main Street.  My Mac, the hardware for all blogging and searching, is at the ready just to the left of the painting area.

As you can see below, my magic palette fit serendipitously into one of the drawers; this let me cram a lot more work surface into a lot less space.  There was also handy room for my water cups and brush holders.

 So everything was arranged in the way most conducive to painting, creating, blogging, growing, learning, etc. etc.

And I was on round 338 of Draw Something.  And my email was all opened, read and organized.

And everything in the new house, which wasn't even dusty, had been dusted.  Hmmm.

So why wasn't I painting?

In a word: Fear!

Let me back up to the packing phase of the move.  When we first made the decision to make this huge change, we walked around the house and the office and identified only what we wanted to keep.  Because our space was going to be so limited, each item we moved had to be carefully considered, and The ArtDemigod and I agreed that, on furniture, we both had to love it at least 90% in order to take it with us.  Personal items were our own choice.  He kept his base guitar and fly fishing gear.  I was adamant about my studio.

So deciding what to keep was easy.  And, honestly, deciding what furniture, old dishes, and household items to let go wasn't hard at all.  (Now cue the bad ghost movie suspenseful music...)

I was fine until I went into to tackle my "craft closet." This closet was a 4' X 12' room that had actually lived a life (under the previous owners of the house) as a tanning room.  As I had little desire to spend my free time cooking my already plenty wrinkled enough skin, I instead lined the long wall from the floor to the ceiling with shelves, which I used to store all of my "projects."

That room was cram packed with supplies for every imaginable type of creative activity.  Beading, sewing, needlepoint, embroidery, knitting, upholstery, and costume supplies were just a few of the items in my own private Michaels.  Along with the inventory, there were literally dozens of half finished projects in almost every imaginable stage of (in)completion.  I had no idea what to keep and what to let go.  It was, literally, overwhelming.

But because the estate sale had been scheduled, and we had a firm closing date, I had to move beyond my paralysis and into action.  But every time I looked at, or moved, or even thought about all of those piles, I felt like a complete failure. Goddamn Martha Stewart, the queen of expectations, the matriarch of unrealized possibility...

What I finally realized about these piles brought me to a very upsetting thought.

I wasn't the the artist who had committed to The Vincent Project; I was the lazy big spender who never finished anything.  (To be fair, there was no corresponding craft closet on the other side of the house storing all of the things I had completed; those items had been long ago given as gifts, recycled, or used up in ordinary living.)  But, in the end, I was still standing in a room with a lot of incomplete passes.  This was something I had to think about.

Without a choice, under an ever shrinking time deadline, as I sorted through all of this stuff,  I realized a common thread - the partially finished projects were all completed to exactly the point at which one of two things had occurred:  either I realized that the end product that I had imagined was beyond my ability to execute, or the materials that I had selected had some how not lived up to my imagined expectation.

In other words, the projects were abandoned because the product had somehow fallen short.

This realization left me feeling very out of sync with The Project, and Vincent, and Art, and Creativity, and exactly who the hell I thought I was.  Was this blog just another thing that I would start and not finish?  Was I even capable of doing this huge task of 52 paintings and essays?  Was this going to be something that would just wind up, unfinished, in some new craft closet in my new studio?

For about two weeks, I just hid from thinking about this whole issue by busying myself with moving in.  I made curtains, and arranged the kitchen, and picked out new furniture and lamps.

On the first weekend after we were all moved in,  I even tried to just kickstart myself back into an inspired state by attending the Lucien Freud Portraits exhibit in Fort Worth (It was FANTASTIC, even in my less than receptive state). I even engaged in a brief fling with two fascinating books on Picasso, which only left me feeling more guilty.

Nothing was working.  What had happened in that craft room had left me feeling completely uncreative and as utterly dried up as an old sponge.

So I decided to think about all of this for a week.  I told myself I wasn't even going to try to paint, and I wasn't going to go near the blog.  I was going to try to figure out what it was about these unfinished projects that had stripped away whatever Mojo I thought I had.  I was going to try to figure out why I had walked into that craft room feeling like an artist, and walked out feeling like a fraud.

The projects were abandoned because the product had somehow fallen short.  If the product had fallen short, did that mean that I had fallen short?  And what did "fallen short" mean, exactly?  After about three days of thinking, I finally figured it out.  I abandoned all of those projects because I could not finish them perfectly.  In all of this work, I was not allowing myself to be "good enough;"  it had to be perfect.  I had to be perfect.

What an awful realization that was.  There was no way in doing this project that I could paint "perfectly."  Vincent had already covered that territory; no one, no matter how good, could paint a Vincent Van Gogh better than Vincent Van Gogh.  To be sure, a lot of people, including myself, have tried.  But all of that work could only be, at best, derivative.

That was what I liked so much about doing the Vincent Project.  From the beginning, I never felt like I had to be perfect because Vincent already was.  All I was trying to do was to try to learn about painting by copying Vincent and forcing myself to write about it.  And that's when I finally got it, or rather reminded myself of my original intent.  The purpose of The Vincent Project was NOT to produce "perfect" paintings.  The purpose of the Vincent Project was to learn how to paint.

And that realization freed me, at least enough to pick up a canvas and start scribbling. (Please see Author's Note, below*) 

On Day 46, I went back to the beginning.  I decided to paint a chair.

In my very first blog posting, I mentioned that all of this started with a student assignment from a painting class where we were asked to copy a painting by a great artist, and I chose to paint Vincent's chair.  This was the chair that he had painted while living in the little yellow house in Arles in anticipation of the visit by fellow painter Paul Gauguin.

On the left is Vincent's chair - mine is on the right.

As a companion to the painting of his own chair, Vincent also rendered the chair of Paul Gauguin.

                                                             



I would find my way back to Vincent the way I found him in the first place.  I could (at least try) to paint Gauguin's chair.  I could paint!  Finally! There was something I wanted to paint!

People read a lot of symbolism into the two chairs, saying that Vincent painted the chairs as portraits; they were expressions of how he felt about both himself and his guest.  Vincent's chair was a peasant's chair: rough, armless, and placed on a clay tile floor, probably in a kitchen.  Gauguin's chair, in contrast, was very fancy, with curved arms and a carved back, resting on a lush carpet in what looked like a more formal area of the house.

Vincent positioned on Gauguin's chair totems of learning (books) and culture (the lighted candle).  In contrast, Vincent's chair held the small, cheap pleasure of the common man, a pipe and pouch of tobacco.  Notice that, like the candle, Vincent's pipe could have been depicted with an ember of lit tobacco; instead he presents it with the bowl of the pipe turned away from the viewer.  Vincent's chair is seen in sunlight, Gaugin's is shown in a nocturnal scene.  In the background of Gauguin's chair is a lighted sconce, behind Vincent's chair are a box of sprouting onions.

Most telling, for me, is the door that Vincent painted into his own chair view.  As any patron of movie symbolism will tell you, a door is a portal, and a portal is an escape.  No door or window is presented in the Gauguin chair; Vincent clearly did not want to provide any retreat for the first painter to join him in what he fervently hoped would become a thriving artist's colony.  I wonder if Vincent meant all that I am reading into what he painted, or if there just happened to be a door right behind the chair he was painting?

So, with a newly opened, fresh, white canvas student board positioned to receive, I (re)started the Vincent Project by dividing a copy (that I had in a book) of the painting into quarters.  As I observed the image, I was excited to get started: Gauguin's chair was so much fancier than Vincent's chair, and it had all these awesome lights and very atmospheric electric blue shadows.

First, I transferred the image from the book to my canvas, one quarter at a time.

I drew out the entire cartoon,  then loaded my brush with the ochrey red that I observed underneath the wash of green on Vincent's wall.

Here is a close up of the red...

And a longer shot - notice the deeper hues behind the chair, away from the source of light

My trusty angled brush

And here is the green wash that I put over the ochre.  

Here is a view of the palette that I was using to make the green wash.  I think that my color wound up as a little to "tourquoisy," as compared to Vincent's painting, which had the wall as more of a hunter green.

Eventually, I do catch this difference, and it will get corrected later.  Can you see what I missed?  Compare the right arm of my chair to Vincent's.  His has a beautiful, sensuous curve, while mine looks like the arm of the chair was broken and badly set.  I wish I had noticed this before I went on with the painting.

(Author's note to herself: "Shut up! Think about the process, not the product... It does not need to be perfect... what can you learn from the mistake?")

The close up at right shows this mistake in all its ignominious glory.

But I do like the way the ochre and the green are vibrating against each other; it is so cool how our eyes process these opposite colors and make them come alive.

On this painting, I used a charcoal pencil (rather than a stick) to make the initial drawing.  I liked doing it this way because the pencil line was much more precise, and there was far less smearing of the charcoal, both from my my hands brushing against it, and from the black swirling into my freshly applied paint.

Here is my chair next to Vincent's, so far.

Next, I started to get my browns on.  I started with Van Dyke Brown and the ever popular alizarin crimson hue.

I also squeezed out the following:
raw umber and transparent raw umber,
burnt umber and transparent burnt umber,
transparent raw sienna,
burnt sienna and transparent burnt sienna (I did not have any transparent raw sienna).

Notice how all of these groovy browns have a raw or burnt option, as well as a "regular" (opaque) or a transparent option.

It was a lovely lesson to have all of these choices ordered onto my palette.  I admit it was confusing at first, but each of these tubes contains a unique product, and each of these products does a different and very individual thing on the canvas.

After reviewing the theme of this week's blog, here is my advice: do not be afraid of "wasting" paint.  You cannot learn from paint that is trapped in a tube.  Release the paint and let it teach you.

Observe my lesson plan below:  With the exception of the transparent raw sienna and Van Dyke brown (both shown at the bottom of the picture; raw sienna is on the left), transparents are on the right, and opaques are on the left.  The colors are ordered, (top to bottom, left to right) as raw umber, transparent raw umber; burnt umber, transparent burnt umber; burnt sienna, transparent burnt sienna, then transparent raw sienna and Van Dyke brown.  Alizarin crimson is (as of the photo session) still locked in its tube.

Ultimately, this is a rose by any other name situation.  The bottom line is that the colors are simply ways of expressing an observation or idea.  It is less important to focus on their names, and more important to focus on what they can do for you in your painting.  That said, knowing the names will keep you from a hunt and peck method of finding which color you want.  So, don't get bogged down by brown confusion.  Start squirting, painting, and take command of your colors!

At right are some browns on the chair.  I definitely used all of the colors that I had out; but I cannot tell you exactly what I used where.

(That is the point of a student board; it is a place to experiment and make mistakes - and remember, Martha - it doesn't have to be perfect!)

Speaking of "mistakes," has anyone yet observed what is missing from Vincent's original painting?  There are no stretcher bars  on the right side (as you are sitting in it) of the chair.  I observed this when I was doing the drawing, and decided that Vincent left them out on purpose because it would be confusing to see them juxtaposed against the patterned carpet.

At left is a close up of the front underskirt of the chair.  Notice how transparent the paint is, you can still see the white canvas peeking through the wood tone.

The Payne's gray outlining the rush seat will add depth and dimension to the straw as it is layered on.

I was observing other colors that I thought were missing, and threw out some cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, and a reinforcing portion of the transparent raw sienna.

These are the sunny colors of the South of France, and just seeing them got me in the mood for a glass of wine, the Provincial sun, and a Peter Mayle book.

At left you can see I have started on the rush seat of the chair.  As I painted the cover of the book, I accidentally slopped paint that should have been only on the cover onto the "pages" area.  (I know I don't have to be perfect; I just don't want to be intentionally sloppy.)

This was a classic case of coloring outside the lines.  And, although I am usually totally in favor of coloring outside the lines, in this case, I did not want the cover of my book sliding, Dali - like, down the pages below.

Luckily, I had my little "scrubber" brush handy to correct my mistake.  This type of brush can be purchased individually or in a set, and they come in various sizes for cleaning up all sorts of painting messes.

The red handled brush has stiff, white, synthetic bristles which can be used to literally scrub the canvas, as long as the paint you are scrubbing away is still wet.

The brush is really called a "scrubber," it is put out by a company called Creative Mark; look for it at your art supply.

When using a scrubber brush, I typically wet it in some water, then dab the bristles off with a paper towel so that the scrubbing area is moist, but not wet, when I apply it to the mistake.

The scrubber is such an excellent tool, and I am so glad that I have them to work with.

Shown at left is an extreme closeup of the newly cleaned canvas.

And now for the electric blue shadows.  I have already added a lot of greens and yellows to the rush seat.  I think it is looking appropriately rounded, and I am happy with the rough quality of the seat itself.

The first time I saw Vincent's painting of Gauguin's chair, I just didn't get the shadows.  They seemed unshadowlike, primarily because of the choice of color.  You could tell that they were shadows because they were placed exactly where you would expect shadows to be, but the color - that color was definitely not a regular shadow color.

But as I looked again, I realized that those shadows are what make that painting work.  Almost all of the other colors in the piece (with the exception of the green walls and seat) are warm and very cozy tones.  The green hardly even counts as cool, because painted beneath both the walls and the seat are still more layers of warm.  There are black outlinings, which are cool, but they did not pop at all until I layed in the electra glide.

Without us having to see the other side of the room, those shadows give us the atmosphere of a crackling fire's reflection on a well polished and barely used chair. Those shadows cool us, and cause our eyes to move around the painting in exactly the way that Vincent intended.  In the underlayment of the candle is the same bright blue - if the candle does indeed symbolize culture and knowledge (for Vincent), then he has absolutely bathed Gauguin's chair it.

Yet he does the same (although much more indirectly) in the painting of his own chair, by rendering the wall and door behind in a cool selection of turquoise and sky blue.  He may have just chosen these watery colors because he thought that they would look nice (if so, he was so right!), but who knows?  Half the fun in observing art is in asking the rhetorical "why" questions; the spell would be broken if we began expecting replies.



Above are some closeups of what I did to try to get the rug... Even Vincent's version was really just a series of different colored blobs.  Although I did not match him blob for blob, I think I got sorta close with it.  After doing the rug, I agreed with him 100% on the whole stretcher bar thing.

Below are some final shots of the finished painting.  What do you think?

Thanks for reading, everybody!  Please feel free to make a comment; I would love to hear your thoughts, whatever they may be.

*Author's note: Although it sounds like I just snapped my fingers to get myself out of my funk, nothing could be further from the truth.  The subject of perfectionism and its impact is a long and complex one, particularly for the women in my family.  I think that the impasse that I described at the beginning of this posting is really a signpost for me as I continue down the road of this project.  In future blog postings, there will be more said about perfectionism, it's effect on other artists, and the ways in which it has shaped my own life.

Happy holidays to all, and I will see you as much as I am able between now and the new year!

Catherine

Vincent takes the week off; Paul and I sneak away to a tropical paradise.

This brooding fellow is Paul Gauguin, in his self Portrait of the Artist with the Idol, which he painted in 1891.  

Paul Gauguin was a complicated man who led the equivalent of several very interesting lives before his death, at the age of 54 in the Marquesas Islands.  

At the time of his passing, Gauguin was deeply in debt, working as a government clerk, and suffering from both syphilis and an unhealed broken ankle.  If that wasn't enough,  he was awaiting the verdict in an appeal that could have sent him to prison, and had just fathered his third child from two (separate) 14 year old mistresses.  

Despite all that, he was an extremely influential artist, and his work would later exert its impact on the career of another important Paul (or Pablo), Piccasso.

Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin's lives intersected with a clash so violent and so profound that each man was forever changed by the relationship, and, even today, no discussion of one can be conducted without considering the influence of the other.

Paul Gauguin could not have been more the opposite of Vincent Van Gogh. 

He was born in Paris during the first year of the tumultuous and bloody French Revolution.  His father, a journalist and editor of the National newspaper, made an unfortunate enemy of a man who came to great power at the end of the Revolution, a little general named Napoleon Bonaparte.  After Bonaparte's coup d'etat, Clovis Gauguin made the decision to flee with his wife, young daughter, and three year old Paul to his wife's homeland of Peru.  

During the arduous voyage to South America, Clovis Gauguin was struck dead by an aneurism, leaving Ailne alone, at sea, with her two young children.  Eventually, they landed safely in Lima, where the young widow was taken in by her uncle, a Peruvian government official.  The family remained in Peru until Paul was 7 years old, and those four years in the tropics became the formative event in Gauguin's life.

In 1855, the family returned to France, where Paul was enrolled in school.  Paul was unhappy there, and longed to return to the exploration, travel and adventure of his early years.  As soon as he was able, he qualified as a navigational cadet on a ship routed between Le Havre and Brazil, then later, at age 20, he enlisted in the French navy.  While he was serving at sea, Gauguin's mother died.  Paul returned home, then, in honoring his mother's wishes, took a job as a clerk at a Stockbroker's office in Paris.

Gauguin quickly worked his way up the brokerage ladder, and, in time, became a successful and very rich stock broker.  Like many of his modern counterparts, Gauguin began to buy contemporary art as an investment, and a way to dispose of his large disposable income.  He was taken by the radical new work of the impressionists, and began collecting their work, presumably as a way to study their technique.

In 1873, Gauguin married, and continued in living a life filled with middle class pleasures, including the leisure to become a "Sunday Painter."  He was encouraged by the Impressionists (as they, no doubt, had been encouraged by his pocket lining patronage), and began entering competitions and joining Impressionist exhibits.  In addition to producing many paintings and some sculpture, Gauguin began producing a number of children, as well.

The stock market collapse of 1882 (and his resulting job loss) probably greatly influenced Gauguin's decision to become an artist.  He sold much of his art collection (at a fraction of its value), and he, his wife and five children moved, first to Rouen, then eventually to her homeland of Denmark.  There, the rest of the art collection was sold piece by piece, and the family struggled financially until Gauguin made the decision to abandon his wife and children, and he returned to France to paint full time.

He struggled alone for about a year, painting both in Paris and, during the summer, in the more rural area of Brittany.  While there, he met and painted with Emile Bernard, who was mentioned in last week's blog.  In the winter of 1886, Gauguin returned to Paris, where he became (barely) acquainted with Vincent Van Gogh.  During that time, he produced one of his most important early paintings, Four Breton Women 1886.
In the Spring of 1887, seeking a "more savage way of life," Gagugin and fellow painter Charles Laval boarded a ship headed for Panama.  They got as far as Tobago before they ran out of money.  Laval addressed the problem by contracting to paint portraits; not wanting to sacrifice his artistic integrity, Gauguin decided the better solution to his financial predicament was to hire on as a laborer on the Panama Canal.  He lasted two weeks.

That debilitating venture did earn him sufficient funds to travel with Laval to the French colony of Martinique, where he began to forge his own unique voice in his artistic exploration of the tropics.  Gauguin and Laval were living the "more savage way of life," but there was a price to be paid: both men were suffering at this time from dysentery as well as malaria; Laval was miserable enough to attempt suicide.

Gauguin's Still Life with Profile of Laval 1886

In 1888, they returned to Paris, where Gauguin was taken in by an old friend - fellow broker and painting enthusiast, Emile Schuffenecker.  There, Paul was introduced  to a ceramicist who taught him how to decorate earthenware.  Now, with a collection of decorated pottery, along with the paintings that he had sent back from Martinique, as well as his current work, Gauguin began to exhibit his work in a Parisian gallery.

Gauguin's Portrait of Madeleine Bernard, 1889
Madeleine was the sister of Artist Emile Bernard

Vision after the Sermon or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1889
(Arguably Gauguin's most important work in this period)

Gagugin sporting a rockin' mullet

Gauguin's work was displayed at a locale that was frequented by the brothers Van Gogh.  Both Vincent and Theo were very intrigued by Gauguin's exotic new vision,  and Theo began quietly buying the work of the well travelled artist.

The rest of Gauguin's story, including what really happened between Paul and Vincent in the Yellow house, why Vincent cut off his ear, and a sunflower painting that is guaranteed to break your heart will all be revealed in next week's blog posting - I encourage you to please stay tuned...

And, in honor of Gauguin, who loved painting exotic, tropical women,  this week, I am going to do a portrait of a dreamy island girl of my own.

I had been invited to a birthday party for a beautiful young woman who was turning 21, and I wanted to do something really special to honor her on the big day.

I have known Savannah since she was a very little kid.  She is a year ahead of Duncan in school, and has sung with him in school choirs, church choirs, show choirs, honor choirs, and in many musical revues and other theatrical productions.

Below is a photo of Savannah (middle), and Duncan (right) and fellow student and good friend, Cody (left) after the premier performance in their High School's production of My Fair Lady.  Duncan was Henry Higgins to Savannah's Eliza Doolittle, and Cody took a very comedic turn as Colonel Hugh Pickering.  They all look so young (except Cody, who was made up to look old)!

I have known Savannah and her family almost her entire life, and, without a doubt, she is one of the more joyful, bubbly, and gracious people I have ever met.  She is a gorgeous singer, a lovely girl, a fine comedic actress, and, although she is the most native of native Texans, she is also a master of the Brooklyn accent.

For her birthday, I wanted to do a portrait of Savannah that I hope will capture forever for her what it is like to be young, talented, full of hope and loved by many.

With grateful appreciation to Mark Zuckerberg, I begin by stalking my subject on Facebook.

A posting from Savannah's facebook account,
along with a sketch I did to try out the image. 

 All young women who have FB accounts adeptly use them to post their favorite "self portraits."  Scroll through the home page of any one young enough to be truly facile on the social networking site, and their timeline will reveal everything you need to know about what they like best about themselves.  On Savannah's, I saw her grow from the little kid singing in the choir with Duncan, through the only slightly awkward middle school years, then onto the bloom of High School and the confident perfection of College. 

At the time that I was selecting which photo of Savannah that I wanted to use, I had been doing a lot of research into Paul Gauguin and the time he spent with Vincent  in Arles.  I had looked at a lot of Gauguin's work from his time in the South Seas, and I was very taken with his sensitive depictions of the island women, who were often dreamily rendered with flowers in their hair, against lush, tropical settings.

Scrolling through Savannah's wall, I found one photo that I kept thinking about, particularly in terms of Gauguin's work.



Although it was another challenging profile shot, I really loved it, because I thought it captured both the sweet and charming child that I loved, as well as the knowing and beautiful woman that she was becoming.

Because FB does not reveal everything I needed for my portrait, I decided to spy further by following the convenient link she had set up for her pinterest account, where she had posted her hopes, wishes and dreams about decorating, fashion, culture, and, most importantly to me, travel.

A little pinterest stalking revealed what I already knew.  Savannah loved the water.  Ocean, lake, or sparkling in a glass - Savannah lived for the liquid, and I wanted to include that in my painting for her.

I needed a photo that would sum up hopes, dreams and wishes, and would give me a complete and unified horizontal composition.

And there it was.  Under the heading "Light Can Be Found In Surprising Places," was a picture of hundreds of luminara floating on drifting plank boats in a gently rippled tide.  The scene was captured either at dawn or dusk - (I am not sure which, and it doesn't really matter) and I was fascinated by the way the water reflected both the candles and the sunlight in the image.



The mood of the photo was hopeful, prayerful, and exotic, and I felt it would be just right for a girl who will go many places in her life.

Below you can see a computer montage where I displayed the  photo from her pinterest page next to the portrait (left) that I selected from her Facebook page.

And at right you can see what I did in my sketchbook to work out the image before I started painting.

I knew the profile would be challenging because in the photo Savannah's large and luminous brown eyes were hidden, so I would not be able to use them to really capture her in the portrait.  Otherwise, the photo did offer a good angle on her finely structured jawbone, as well as her pert little nose and very angelic hint of a smile.

I knew that her shoulder, which was crooked up into her chin, would be difficult to render in a way that did not cause discomfort, so I decided to edit out that part of her body.

At left you can see my final drawing, which I rendered on a small horizontal stretched canvas.

You can see that everything is pretty loose and sketchy at this point.

Below is a closer shot of the sketch, where I have made some additional corrections and added in more luminara.

I still had some orange, yellows and greens left on my palette, so I decide to start on the tropical yellow flower in her hair.

Outlining with the orange, I quickly added in some yellows to blend the colors a bit on the canvas.  This loose, shlumpy flower is fun after the precise blades of the sunflowers, and I am appreciating the crepe de chine texture of the blossom.

I want to think about her face for a long time before I start painting, so that I will have a faint prayer of getting it right.

I have two days to paint before the party.

Thank God I am using fast drying acrylics!

After a little more work with the flower, I start adding in some of the background sky, again using leftover oranges, yellows, and now, purples from my palette.


I add a little purple to the edges of the flower for more definition, and start filling in the rest of the sky behind her (below).

Because this is a wraparound canvas and will probably not ever be framed, I paint the sky around the corner, as well.

I want to get some darks in the sky, so I start putting in some blues, violets, and greens in the background.

Below is a closeup of the first layer of the sky.

Next, I add in the little town across the water, with it's tiny lights glistening like diamonds against the shadowy outline of the landmass.

I the actual photo, these lights are an overlapping image of land lights and boat lights - I simplify the image by putting everything on terra firma.

I paint out the closer clouds, and begin work on the water, using greens, turquoise, voilets, light and medium blues, and, of course, ultramarine.

To define the luminara, I paint their little boats with a slash of payne's gray, and define the edges of the lamps with umber.

More water, and I add in some vertical "rays" on the horizontal striations of the sky.

Oshenz iz lrg.

And here is most of the water filled in.  Unlike my own musculature, I am thinking this ocean looks appropriately ripply.

I am beginning to add in some highlights from the (setting? rising?) sun, as well as from the floating candles.

My first stab at the face.

I consider stabbing myself back.

Sorry, Savannah!

The eye is a serious problem for me.  Slowly, I come to the realization that it is deja vu all over again.  Her eye is in the same position as was Duncan's eye on the troglodyte portrait I did of him.

Crap on a stick!

My only solution is to paint the eye shut and go to bed, hoping for a nocturnal solution.




Below you can see that which I was too panicked to photograph before I painted over it.

I hatz portrates!

expeshuly of peplz

I luvz!

This is what greets me the next day.  What on earth did I do to give her a rash on her neck?  It doesn't look like a fine, square jaw; it looks like she was strangled by a sea monster!

The hair is OK.

It is time, once again, to break out the big guns.  I got out my Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces (see recommended books) and looked up how to draw eyes.  There were many forward facing eyes shown in the book, but none depicted in profile.  The author of the book is an FBI trained artist whose specialty is as a forensic artist.  I determined that profiles were probably not really her forte, or at least not her forte in this book.

So I kept moving down my bookshelf.  Many years ago, my mom had loaned me an old textbook of hers, called "An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists," by Fritz Schider.

This book, first published in german in 1929, contains hundreds of plates of drawings, etchings, reproductions and photographs which depict the human body.  There are full body portraits, as well as cut aways depicting muscles, bones and details of joints.  There are also detailed close ups of eyes, mouths, noses and hands, and there are progressive photographs of both a boy and a girl from toddlerhood through the young adult years.

I was amused by the series of photographs depicting a perfect and very athletic man running, and the corresponding compilation of a woman carrying a set of buckets.  I think the selections says something about how the author felt about men and women, leisure and work.

Anyway, the atlas did contain a selection from one of Michelangelo's sketchbooks where he drew a woman in profile, with her left eye gazing downward.  (Michelangelo, study of heads for the Leda)  Although it was facing the opposite direction of Savannah's, the eye in the sketch was in approximately the same position as the eye in the photo.

I stared at that plate for a long time, then the lightbulb finally went off!

A humorous picture, eh?  What did the grow out look like?

Michelangelo used his sketchbook!

I have a sketch book!  I even have a pencil!  I can be sketchy!

First I draw an eye looking downward.

It looks like a cross between a flying saucer and an oscar fish.

Not good.

Next, I try Janet Leigh's eye from the shower scene in Psycho.

To up the horror factor, I add in backwards facing crow's feet.

She is not wearing volumizing mascara.

This one reminds me of Charlotte's Web.

It is amazing what can be done with just a few lines, scribbles, darks and lights.

You can draw something that looks like the backside of a spider.

And now, a praying mantis holding a black eyed pea.

OK, this is getting better, but it is a face looking forward with an eyeball facing away at a 45 degree angle.

Putting the pupil facing forward didn't help.

Now we are getting somewhere.

The eyelid is looking like it is wrapping around in a dimensional way.

This time, I drew the iris of the eye first, then layered the eyelids on top.

I liked that so much, that I did it again.  This eye still looks a little flat though.

Note the trick of dropping a shadow just under the lid to add dimensionality.

Here is a sketch of an eye looking down.  You can see where I drew the "egg" of the iris and didn't erase.

It is not a perfect rendering by any means, but I think I am finally going in the right direction.

I send a sketch book message to my future self.



Below is the whole page, which includes some bonus lips!

I start by drawing the iris first.  Drawing on the painted surface is challenging because there are tiny variations in and on the canvas, and the natural inclination is to follow the illusion of the line that is just below the surface of the top layer of paint.

And here is the super close up.

 I got so excited about the new eye that I forgot to photograph as I painted...


Can you see the other big change I made?

With so much warmth in the hair and sky, I decided to change the flower from yellow to pink.

I shave the nose with water, and soften the cheek around the edge of the mouth.


The Artdemigod did not like my cloud formation.  Throwing around his authority as a licensed pilot, he said that no cloud in nature looked like the one in the middle of the painting.

Sparring back with my artistic authority, I pointed out the photographic evidence presented by the middle cloud in the pinterest photo, but, I did agree that it looked like the big cloud had opened up a trap door and all of it's cloud innards were falling out.  So with a simple swipe of my paintbrush, I changed the weather pattern.

Here is a close up of the final version of Savannah's profile.

Note the revisions to the hairline, eyebrows, mouth and nose.

How much does it look like Savannah?

That is for others to judge.

I am happy with the dreamy quality of the expression, and I am relieved that my eye looks even a little bit like an actual, pretty girl's eye.

How can a girl with a huge voice sing with that tiny little nose?

And here is a close up of the ocean, lanterns, sky and shoreline.

No, you are not seasick.  It is another out of focus picture.

I am asking Santa for a good camera for Christmas this year.

Perhaps I will send an illuminated wish out to sea, sailing away on a tiny boat....

Here is an angle on the wrap around canvas on the top of the painting.  It looks like she has a lot of hair if you looking at it this way, but looking straight on to the main painting it looks right, and looking straight on to the upper side of the painting it looks correct, as well.

 And this is where the painting wraps around the vertical side.

It looks like I've got the dining room table almost set. I wonder what the Artdemigod is making for dinner?

And here, in time for the party, is the final portrait of Savannah!

Thank you all so much for reading along!  I am constantly amazed at how the blog seems to interweave itself into my own life, and the creative ease I am getting from both the writing and the painting.  Every day I seem to run across something that I want to put into or research for the blog, and I have SO enjoyed sharing these discoveries with all of you.

Please feel free to pass the blog along to anyone you think might be interested, and again, thanks for inspiring me!

Catherine