Monday, December 13, 2010

Miss Emilia VanPelt is done!

My portrait of Jen's daughter Emilia is hanging for the month in the window of Rowland’s Framing Studio on Main Street in Concord. It's all dressed up with a cool gold frame. I also have a still life of grapes in the window.
 

I have so many unfinished paintings, I am going to try and tackle them rather than start something new. The first one is Kristen’s Orchids. Kristen is my neighbor, currently in school in Montreal. We got together to paint a while back and she brought some orchids that belong to her mother. We set up the still life in front of a black drape, to keep things simple. Despite the amount of time we spent painting, neither Kristen nor I finished our canvases. I took a photo and emailed it to her so she could finish hers at her leisure. I wasn’t sure I would ever get back to it as I had a date with Miss Emilia’s portrait that, unbeknown to me, would require a year and an half.

Well, I finished Emilia and she went into the window. I hadn’t really planned what to do next, with the holidays and all. But week ago Sunday, I locked myself out of the house. I was making applesauce out of some dated apples and thank God, hadn’t started cooking it yet. I have a spare key for just such occasions but for some reason, the key didn’t work. Boy it was cold! So I went up to the studio and started a fire to hang out there until Nelson got home from skiing.

What the heck, I thought, I might as well paint. There, staring at me, was the orchid painting – not very happy in the state I left it. I looked all over the studio for the photo but couldn’t find it anywhere. That’s typical of my organizational skills. And without access to the main house and the computer, I was forced to think for myself, and rely on memory. One thing I remembered was that the photos were rich with the orange and pink glare of incandescent lights, so it was just as well that I didn’t have one to go by. On the other hand, I couldn’t remember the plant anatomy and the painting was really just a sketch, without sufficient detail. But I plunged in anyway. What I had originally painted with a warm grey (dark white) I repainted with blue and lavender greys. I used combinations of Naples Yellow Light and white, and also very light turquoise and a pink made with Jaune brilliant (a peachy color) and some permanent rose. All of these very light and layered over the previous surface. I used a medium of 8 parts distilled turps with 1 part linseed oil (fat over lean) to loosen up the viscosity of the paint. I was happy and excited about the the painting – the whole character of it had changed.
Yesterday, an ice storm, that later turned to all rain, grounded me. So I built a fire and set off to get some more work done on the orchids. I had the photo on my “stick” (a SanDisk) so I was able to run off a photo and correct the flower anatomy. I painted in the flowers that were still undone and painted indigo around each flower so I could soften the edges against the dark background. You can't see the subtle blue on the background that suggests the folds or my signature. Unbelievably, I finished it, even signed it!

Wow, I’m on a roll! What’s next? I’ll keep you posted.