This is not a linear process

 

 

 

To-do lists and project plans have always been essential components of my modus operandi.  The satisfaction of check-check-checking and the feeling that I'm making progress keep me moving on to my next act.  Some of these strategies work in my Homegrown Art School – renamed since early COVID days, my Artist-in-Residence program.   Yup, I can lay out a big plan but when it comes to putting paint to canvas, things sometimes go awry. 

 

But that never stops me.  I am making progress, really I am, in my "Jury is Out" series (recapped last time) and my aim to work in the style of long-time favourite artist-teacher Mary Beth McKenzie.

 

 

 

I tried various sketched poses and eventually decided on a sitting pose and did some painted studies of a face that might be useful.  Working from a scaled-up magazine shot -- conveniently the reverse of the pose I'd decided on -- I  laid out the basic composition.

 

 

In books and videos, I'd been observing different artists' practices in beginning a painting.  In this review, I noticed again a quote from Mary Beth that had struck me years ago:-- 

"While an initial concept is important, you must allow a painting to take its own course.  It will grow in stages, and each stage, and your reaction to it, influences the next.  A painting has its own existence and reality, and you have to follow its needs, making changes freely.  Often these changes take you in another direction, opening up new possibilities that are sometimes more interesting than your original idea.  You have to allow a painting to evolve."

I'd planned to use certain colours, including a dark blue-black for the female's hair, and began to build these up gradually as I "kept the whole thing going at once" (- an almost but not quite universal artist's dictum). 

 

 

By this point, I was learning some interesting things about working with close tonal values (avoiding strong contrasts in darks and lights) – and decided I could learn even more if, to some extent, I emulated the light colours in the cover painting of the McBible.

 

 

I kept going in this direction but began to think I'd have been better off to try to "copy" that cover painting – and I became more and more hesitant to press onward.  So with a few lessons learned, I laid a few more layers and decided to call it quits with  "The Jury is Out (Mary Beth)" copyright 2021.  (Maybe I'll be like Matisse and sneak into the museum months after the painting is purchased and hung to put some more strokes on the canvas!  Haha.)

  

 

Still – there was one more thing I wanted to try, a technique referred to by my Hero Artist.  (We don't say "heroine" any more, I guess).   This is the use of a palette knife, either to lay out a broad swath of paint or, with the knife's narrow edge, to "cut" a very fine line of paint.  And I have plenty of barely used palette knives!

 

For my experiment, I selected one lucky candidate from the Cardboard Club – that cozy collection of faces I've produced from time to time to use up excess paint.

 

 

Then I swathed and sliced with abandon – thanking my lucky stars that I hadn't tried this technique at a late stage of "Jury."

 

Wow.  This now resembles one of those frostbitten arctic explorers who, having lost their bearings,  has just made it back to civilization through an unexpected blizzard.  It's time to close the book on this lesson, isn't it?

 

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.