If at first you don't succeed

 

 

 

I did try again.  And again and again.  And then I ran away from home for a day to clear my head at VanDusen Garden, where I always spend a little time with my friend Dr. Menzies in this tranquil corner, a good place to mull things over.

 

Our story so far:  I've assigned myself the project of deliberately working in styles that progress from the flat, linear to the more painterly – and then see what comes of it in terms of my own approach.  Until I've completed a few of these experiments, the jury is out – that's the name of my series which imagines a group of art students waiting to learn if their submissions have been accepted.  So far:  Alex and Nando. 

 

For the third student's submission, I'd planned a spinoff on my long-time favourite artist-teacher, Mary Beth McKenzie.

 

When I first discovered this book that's been so meaningful to me, she was a slim, dark-eyed 41-year-old artist, just making her mark in New York City.  I was a year older, also dark-eyed, and otherwise in the Wannabee category.  Here's a tour around a fairly recent McKenzie exhibit where you'll see artist-coincidentally-as-senior-citizen, still creating her wonderful larger-than-life paintings.  (Just a hint:  You might want to mute the curator who seems to say the same thing four times over.)

 

I'd been spinning my wheels for two weeks, sketching various set-ups for a Mary Beth Wannabee Painting, when I took myself off to the Garden.  I came home refreshed, again looked through my life drawing sketches, and selected a pose from a 2019 in-person session:

 

Then I chose a face from a recent on-line life session.

 

Coincidentally, I happened on a similar pose in an old magazine and used that to scale up to my intended 18" x 24" canvas size. 

 

Then I got cold feet and decided I'd better do a preliminary study of the face – which was so intriguing to me, I wanted to spend time with it anyway. 

 

If this looks easy, it wasn't.  So I decided to take a page from my mentor Mary Beth who advised that there was a lot to learn at the beginning stage of a painting and to avoid the compulsion to produce a finished product.  "Make many starts," she said.  So I started another.

 

I continued to work on the two in tandem, using different approaches with form and colour.

  

When I reached a certain point with Face One, I realized another of Mary Beth's wise counsels.  This face was so dark, it looked like an old ad for Coppertone Suntan Lotion before we all became aware of sunblock.

 

I'd finally understood the point of her advice to "Put down the most important colour first – that's the guide to which you will key all the colours that follow."   So….I added the background colour to both of them.

 

That showed me the extent to which I needed to adjust both faces.  It also helped me see some structural errors, particularly in Face One.  This is why acrylic painters love white paint!

 

 

I could work back and forth on both paintings for another few weeks, but let's not belabour this.  They're studies, after all.

  

 

Or should I try a third face?  No, I'll leave that to VanDusen Garden.