Layer One

It's amazing how much the painting feels 'completed' by just filling in the background. In just a few minutes' time, it went from being half covered to all covered. Unfortunately, I had envisioned getting the first layer blocked in in just a few hours, not 2 or 3 weeks! But now is the time where I stand back and take a few breaths and comtemplate how I will manage to distort this image and make it a lot more obscure. Yeah, in a way, I'm going to mess it up royally, but that's what I want!

So don't get too attached to it, and don't try and stop me! Just say goodbye to this:

And now, for something completely different (to quote Monty Python)...

I have decided to set this painting aside and begin another, looser one that I can smear around on and learn what to expect with the second phase of this abstraction. That way, I can decide what to do on a work that will have taken less time. Once I get comfortable with the outcome, I'll switch back to this more labored piece. It's not how I wanted to start, but I'm learning. And since I'm such a sissy, I can't be that daring with this first attempt.

Time Lapse

After hassling over a broken washing machine, getting a new set of front-loaders delivered and hooked up, catching up on all the piles of laundry as a result, Father's Day, dental visits, and the other various things in life, I realize that I've slowed way down on this painting. Fortunately, when intending to make an eventual time-lapse view of the work, it doesn't care how much time has actually lapsed in between frames.

I'll cut to the chase here. The image still looks like a member of the paint-by-number club, and I've only tip-toed my way along since I last showed you. Can't wait to smear it up!



You see, I've been fighting 'Multiple Creativity Disorder' again. I feel pulled in several other directions lately. I haven't given in to too many temptations, but I realized that I have probably MORE projects going on that anyone I know. Most of them are started, but some are still only in the planning stages. I thought it would fascinate me to make a list of all of my projects, and maybe I could prioritize them a little better if I saw them listed. I won't get into mentioning the stash of yarn or fabric or beads or other raw materials I have and what I would like to make out of them... that would just be silly!

HA! After listing 29 separate general projects (some of them were paragraphs, enumerating several projects within each category), I got too depressed and decided to copy and paste them into a notebook entry on my desktop. No one wants to hear about all the stuff I need do in the future. If I get around to fiddling on any of them, I'll let you know, and if there's a photo, you may care to glance at it. But trust me, you don't want to read paragraph after paragraph about what I intend to do with this or that.

So I'll just get back to working on the hand of my gal here. Oh, did I mention that this started out to be a painting of the actress Rhona Mitra? She starred in the movie Doomsday, as well as having roles on television shows like Boston Legal, Nip/Tuck, and various others. By the time I get done abstracting the heck out of her, she'll probably look more like Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining'!



I don't think I have enough photos to string up the time-lapse series just yet. Another 2 or 3 images should get it going nicely, and I'll present it at that time- tick, tick, tick...

There is no right way

Up 'til now, I never knew how many decisions were needed to make art that was anything other than realism. Before, working in a realistic style, I had only one goal: make the art look like my reference photo. I found that very easy to do. Now I'm intending to go in a looser, more abstract, and much larger direction and it's making me uneasy. I have worked a couple of long days on this piece and I've realized that it's still turning out way too realistic when you stand back from it. I blocked out the values and painted them in with jagged edges and murky colors. When I photographed the progress, it looks 'very nice' on the camera replay. NOOOOO... that wasn't what I wanted it to be. I was imagining something so vague that you wouldn't really notice a likeness to anyone. Granted, I still have many things planned to 'muck up' this piece, but I seriously have to remember with the next painting, that I don't need to start out so neatly! By the time I start slathering messes of paint all over the place, it will change drastically and the first layer's neatness won't matter.

So here it is so far, in all it's likeness of a paint-by-number work of art:

I should've taped a dollar bill to it so it's size/scale would be more obvious. It's 38 inches tall and totals about 70 inches in width. I have an open palm planned for the left side of the piece, sort of a 'talk to the hand' gesture.

Here's my frustration. It's way too commercial/graphic art looking, and I expected to work less tidy and more painterly. So I have a long list of possibilities to employ that should 'mess up' the image. I might smooth over the hard edges of each value block with some horizontal pinstripes that will 'stitch' the areas together. Those stripes will be varying colors, many that aren't naturally on a face. But the values will average themselves together and still end up making sense on the image (when you stand back and squint!) Also, I plan to create patterns and textures here and there in the areas of more solid color, especially in the dark area off to the right. Also, I think some glaze layers are necessary to add some mottling. I won't even mention the spray paint idea I'm deliberating over. Ha!

So I have made some tape marks on the floor where the tripod will stand, and after each painting session, I will set up the camera and take another shot. Eventually I'll string them all together in an animated gif that will show the time-lapse progression of the painting. This is going to be way more interesting to you than having me babble on about what I did. But at the same time, it's pretty scary for me because I'm in unfamiliar territory without a map, and I don't want anyone to know I may be lost! And SEE?, that's what I need to fight. That phrase right there is saying that I assume there's a right and wrong way to do this and I may or may not be working correctly. I really have to break out of my current tight-working style. My friend Kim told me this story one time (I assume it's true, but I didn't learn it myself in art history class) about Andrew Wyeth. Now, I appreciate his work and have always admired his sensitive, realistic portaits and images. Well, the story goes that one day Andrew was having a particularly frustrating time working and he flung his materials (paint, or brush, or whatever) at the canvas and walked out. The next day when he returned to the piece, instead of lamenting the damage or feeling that he had ruined it, he felt like it was the best thing he'd ever done. I don't know if he managed to incorporate the 'mess' into the realistic image, or covered it up, or exactly what the outcome was. The point is, the action of loosening up that much to fling something at the canvas in some kind of a climactic release didn't ruin the painting or end the world! It worked into the scheme of things and was greatly freeing to the artist. Now, I've never yet been able to do anything close to that. I'm still hovering a few inches over the work, holding my breath, going over and over the areas to solidly build up paint and work out all the brush strokes. Yikes! Get over it!

With all this admission of uncertainty, I must clarify that I can picture working through all these dilemmas with this first large painting and should be able to bypass much of my current hesitation in subsequent works. But the act of capturing all this with the camera as I go along is unnerving, to say the least. Still, I want to do it. A few years ago, a friend of mine was starting to paint and she said she felt like she was showing her bare butt to everyone. I thought that was an extreme way of putting it, but she was so hesitant to show her work at the time and felt very vulnerable when the pieces were done and needed to be exhibited. I really couldn't relate to those feelings then, but I can now. Since I am documenting all the steps along the way, it's not even like the instant exposure of a flasher... BAM! Nope, it's like everyone is warned of what's coming, they are watching and waiting, they see me undo the snap and reach for the zipper... okay, enough! I'll just keep telling myself there is no right or wrong way to do this. The decisions I make along the way are a result of a pretty good base knowledge of art fundamentals and of the materials I'm working with. Therefore, though I could go in any number of directions with each brush stroke, the ones I choose are the ones I choose... that's it. No right or wrong.

There's a neat paragraph in one of my favorite art books 'Art & Fear' by David Bayles & Ted Orland. It goes like this: '...the first few brushstrokes to the blank canvas satisfy the requirements of many possible paintings, while the last few fit only that painting- they could go nowhere else. The development of an imagined piece into an actual piece is a progression of decreasing possibilities, as each step in execution reduces future options by converting one- and only one- possibility into a reality. Finally, at some point or another, the piece could not be other than it is, and it is done.' (and I noticed that there is no mention whatsoever about any brushstroke being right or wrong, or anyone's embarassing nakedness showing. Whew!)

Allow Me To Introduce Myself...

I know, it's been a very long time since I muttered so much as a word here. I'm so sorry about that, but it's not as if I'm laying around being lazy. In case you've forgotten me, let me refresh your memory. I'm the one that frequently tries to go in several directions at once and has numerous project running simultaneously. I seem to bounce around from one medium to the next, depending on my mood, or an outside deadline, or... well, the weather even!

Since I last posted any news of my projects, I have worked sporadically on about a dozen things, none of which are finished, but a few are getting close. And I also had out-of-state company, and went on a 6-day driving trip with my step-daughter, been working in the garden, had a root canal and post installed in a lower molar (3 dental visits so far) which gets a crown later this month. So I have plenty of excuses as to why I've let my blog go unattended... but enough!... let's get on with it!

To re-cap, I have a garden gate and entrance in the works (still not finished), a guest bedroom redecoration nearing completion, it's adjoining bathroom just getting started, a dining room almost finished in the style of Captain Nemo's Nautilus submarine, some wooden panels under construction to paint on (actual paintings, mind you!), and I'm drawing up plans to create some built-in cabinetry around the living room. Meanwhile, I have tried to find time to knit on a couple different scarves while I'm sitting in waiting rooms or taking a break from more physical work.

So let me just insert a couple photos to back up my story! First, the guest bedroom. Remember the ugly wallpaper I complained about in the kitchen a few months ago? Well, there's more where that came from. The guest room had an unsightly floral wallpaper that HAD to go! It all got covered in a nice, calm grey color. The baby blue desk and shelving unit was also painted to match the walls.

That desk had been my husband's when he was a child.... but aesthetics finally won out over nostalgia... and now it's GREY! It was such a joy to un-box all my books and art materials and get them back within reach. My pencils have never been so organized!

The room was barely dry in time to host our guests from Omaha over Memorial Day Weekend. Hopefully they didn't mind that the room also has to double as my art studio and office space.

My most motivated project lately has been the creation of 5 sets of wooden panels. I am attempting to attach smaller panels together in each set to create a larger piece. Most of them are made up of three pieces and have had to be clamped and glued on a very flat surface so they don't end up warped and mis-shapen.

My father-in-law set up a nice work space for me under the awning of his house. Since I have no sufficient space to work at my house, this has been a real big help. I have set a goal to have all five of these panel sets painted on by the end of summer. I'll be attempting to head off in a new direction for me, artistically. I have always worked in a very realistic style, but at the moment, I feel compelled to loosen up and get a little weird. My subject matter will be faces and they will probably be rendered in colors that don't make sense- with stripes, patterns, and textures that 'don't belong' on a face. I'm not going for anything resembling portraiture here. I want the faces to be fairly abstract so that they only suggest an expression or emotion. Well, I don't want to talk too much about the particulars until I get going. For a change, I will be able to make decisions all along the way about the work. In the past, once I had started, bringing each area to completion before moving on, the decisions were already made. I had to make each subsequent area match the first part. There was no playing around, no experimentation. Now I will have a lot more freedom, and I'm not sure whether to be relieved or worried. I'll let ya know.

In the meantime, I have these groups of panels to join together and then coat with primer.

I plan to capture the daily progress with the camera and I should be able to get back to at least a weekly blogging entry. See you real soon!

What was I thinking?

I'm on day three of the garden gate construction. It has been much harder than I thought it would be. I spent the first two half-days working on sawing out the main corner notches. After completing just the first notch, I was questioning that there must be an easier way! But then by the third or fourth piece, it was going much easier and my cutting improved. Here is a picture of two very different corners, which shows how much better I became at sawing.

I could only do a couple corners at a time and then I'd have to rest my arm. So the concept of this corner is to flip one of these boards over and lock the two notches together at a right angle to make a tight fitting join. That's the term I fumbled around with and didn't know the name of before. Still don't. Anyway, 16 cuts like this one (each one took about 10-15 passes with a triple bladed saw) and I had the basic gate perimeter rectangles done.

Then I started laying in the middle supports. I was originally going to cut them to fit in between the 2x4's and jam them in, holding them with screws from the outside. But I was doing such a thorough job with this other 'new' method I had just learned, so I opted for continuing to work in the same laborious way. And the more pieces I added to the middle, expecting to cut corners at some point and switch to the easier way of attaching them, I continued notching my way along.
















It sprinkled rain on and off, interrupting my work sporadically. Then after I finished one whole gate, it cut loose with a heftier rain so I had to scramble to get my stuff inside. These are big! I will need Hubbs' help with positioning them in place to attach the hinges. But that's another day.


To add a little asymetric interest, I staggered a couple of the vertical boards. I will do the opposite stagger on the second gate to mirror this one. I didn't want too many irregularities in the basic orderly design, but I did consider all kinds of options, drawing them out on paper first. In the end, I only went for this subtle 'misalignment'. Just like with the entry borders I constructed the other day, I don't feel like the scale of this gate is apparent. When I stand next to it, I am a foot shorter!

I worked steadily all day and I have a feeling I'll be very sore tomorrow. I was working on the deck, squatting down for most of the work. But thankfully, my back has been feeling very good lately, so I think my chiropractor's last adjustment was a good one! Tomorrow I intend to finish the second gate and stain and install them on the weekend. I hope my next post finishes off with the entire thing completed! Cheers!

Whoosh!

That's the sound of all those days flying by without making any progress on my projects. I haven't done anything constructive in over two weeks! Wow, that's just not normal.

I have purchased most of the rest of the lumber and materials for the garden entrance and gates. Since I'm not exactly the smartest construction worker there is, I had to ask a lot of questions of my father-in-law. I'm very picky and can come up with lofty, complicated ideas at times, but in the end, I need expert advice on how to actually achieve what I want. My F-I-L offered me the use of a much higher powered saw for some of the process. I have a rather nice saw that can do a combination miter, but my hand saw wasn't up to par. So now I get to use this very heavy-duty hand saw (skill saw, circular saw? I'm a girl- I don't know what it's called!) and we were able to stack 3 blades on this saw at one time. That will allow me to make much wider cuts where I will remove half of the thickness of wood from two separate pieces that get butted together at the corners. I don't know what that's called, but let's say it's like a dovetail join only with just one notch on each piece. Seems like extra work, but you know me... complications are welcome in my projects, and I have a feeling it will look more professional this way.

It's not fair of me to blab about something I haven't done yet, nor will I actually be able to make any progress on it until tomorrow. When I last left off, I just barely got the surrounding border started on the garden entrance. I'll work on the gates next, and finish off with the more Japanese touches across the top. I have been discussing this project with a gardening expert friend and she has given me some suggestions of ways to take the garden in a more Japanese-feeling direction. Imagine a section of tea plants, or a water feature or fountain, and I've already been planning the seating area outside the garden next to the chicken pen and future pagoda (storage shed). If any of you have inspirations on this topic, please share them in the comments. I would love suggestions.

So enough with the words, eh? How about a nice picture from this real Japanese Garden I visited? I believe this was in Fort Worth, but it might have been Seattle. I don't remember which. I would love to have a piece of statuary like this to put somewhere in our garden. I shot this picture using high-speed infrared black and white film. I processed and printed it a few years ago when I had access to a dark room. I actually still co-own a complete darkroom with a good friend who lives in Tulsa. It's set up in one of the rooms in his house. Conveniently, I used to live right across the street from him and we spent a lot of time producing beautiful images... well, that was before I moved to Texas. I don't foresee doing work like this anytime soon, but it really is a nice effect, isn't it? This special film 'sees' things that our naked eye can't. For instance, the foliage in this scene was probably a nice rich green color. In regular black and white film, that would read as a medium or darker grey color. But with infrared film, it appears very light, due to a lot of infrared rays being emitted from the leaves. This highly sensitive film does unexpected things at times, but it's results are usually magical and surreal. In this photo, I have hand-colored the leaves a pale, pale green. The ground and stone structure are a tan color due to the light sepia toning I used on the fiber-based print.

Since I won't really have any garden progress to report until tomorrow, I think it's only fair that I share an awesome recipe I made tonight for a family barbecue. I give most of the credit of its success to the awesome Deb Perelman whose blog shares the absolute best recipes at http://smittenkitchen.com/. Check it out! She won't steer you wrong! So these beans... they are hot and spicy and bacon-y, and very good. I started with Deb's recipe, using all of the same ingredients, but added a little more of this one and a little less of that one, and arrived at what I was happy with. This recipe makes a lot, so if you're getting together with a group, it would be perfect. For me, it made two casserole pans full. It's so good, I never want to eat canned baked beans again. (Well, let me explain something... these were canned beans, but they were plain, unseasoned beans, not the sweet saucy 'baked beans' to start with. But using canned beans bypassed all the soaking and longer cooking time of dried beans. If you have the time and inclination, you could certainly go that route.)

Hot, Spicy, Smokey Baked Beans
(adapted from smitten kitchen, who, in turn, adapted it from Bon Appetit, July 1999)

6 slices bacon (I used turkey bacon and added oil to make 'drippings')
2 cup chopped onion
3/4 cups purchased barbecue sauce
1 cup dark beer
1/4 cup molasses (I used organic, unsulphured)
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 chipotle peppers, minced (from a can, packed in adobo sauce)
or roughly 2-3 tablespoons. Feel free to add more, you numb-tongues out there!
6 (15-16 oz.) cans Great Northern beans, drained

Fry bacon in large skillet over medium heat until crisp. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Transfer bacon to paper towels to drain. Transfer 2 1/2 tablespoons bacon drippings from skillet to large bowl. Finely chop the bacon and add to bowl. Add onion and next 7 ingredients, whisking to blend. Add the chipotle chilies and beans and mix well. Transfer mixture to your casserole dish(es) and bake uncovered for about an hour. Cool 10 minutes before serving. This recipe also called for chopped fresh parsley, but neither Deb or I used it and didn't miss it. You could certainly sprinkle a nice amount on top after it's done, or maybe cilantro. Adding epazote will take care of gas issues (see title of this post!) Have at it, make it your own!

As the weather is going to cooperate tomorrow, I expect to work hard and will show you some garden gate progress in a couple of days. But for now, why don't you make up a mess of these beans and enjoy!

Entrez

I'm creeping along with my garden entrance and feel very proud of the work so far. Being 'just a girl', I feel like I'm doing a lot of heavy lifting and 'guy-sized tasks' with these 2x8 treated beams, 6x6 treated posts, etc. The treated lumber is a lot heavier than regular wood, and even these bolts required a heavy duty drill to get large enough holes bored all the way through five inches of depth. I worked very slowly, measured many times, checking that each piece was level and plumb. So this is where I left off, using up all the materials I purchased so far. I guess that's as good of a place to stop as any.

I haven't actually sunk the last decorative stair-stepped post on the right side. I've only mocked this up with a stump and a scrap piece of wood, but it shows the effect I'm going for. The right side gets two sections of support elements, the left only one. The path leading up to the garden will curve slightly to the left coming toward you in the foreground, and also forks off to the right, just at the lower right corner of this picture, and heads over to the amazing chicken run. That's a story for another blog.

When I see the structure in this picture, it doesn't look as impressive as it does in real life. So that you understand the scale of it, imagine standing directly underneath the cross beam and reaching up. If you're 5'8" like me, you will just barely be able to touch it with your fingertips. See? It doesn't look nearly that high in the picture, does it? It required me climbing a ladder and moving back and forth from one side to the other, trying to prop up the beam, clamping, then measuring and checking the level, then the other side, back and forth. Working by myself made it interesting, to say the least. Getting the beam up there to begin with was comical!

Now I have some great news. I just got my new Nikon digital SLR camera today, so in future posts, I should be able to provide MUCH more impressive photography.

I'll keep this short, but in closing, I'll leave you with a humorous little Photoshopped image I created for a women's photo exhibit a few years ago. This is nothing new, but just something I came across in my files. The theme was 'Misbehaving' and this was my entry, entitled 'Moi?'

Au revoir!