One of the best parts about having a studio is sharing it with friends. You have met our terrific neighbors before in this blog…Sue and Zola Lloyd. Together with their loyal pup Jed, they put all other neighbors to shame…simply the best.
This summer we started a game night tradition with them and Zola’s cousin Zack … and what better game for an art studio than pictionary. Pizza and Pictionary Nights have become our favorite and the uproars of laughter and loud guessing from teammates is good for the heart and the soul.
and thanks to the many who chimed in to help as well…
I decided to bring the panel into the kitchen to provide better light and warmth and set up a spot light at a raking angle, then started with a thin sanding sponge. Some grit on one side and sponge only on the other. Dipped in a little water it quickly brought up a slurry of gesso and in seconds had repaired an imperfection. The key turned out to be starting with the grit side and water…just a little bit…and then wiping in a broader circle with the sponge side which quickly smoothed it back down.
The panel is 32″ x 48″ which is a lot of real estate when you are bending over and squinting and it took almost 2 hours of work to reach a satisfactory surface. I was apparently gloating for just a moment and when I took it outside so I could clean up the studio kitchen the wind knocked it over onto Finnegan’s water dish. UGH. Another 15 minutes of repairing those dings and it was back in shape.
Now safely returned to the warmth of the studio I am going to let it dry overnight before proceeding with the oil out that I do as the next step. It will be interesting to see if the surface is not too smooth or if this gesso will provide enough tooth. I’d hate to have to take an abrasive back to it.
By far the most annoying part, for me, of being a painter is preparing the panels. Last fall, and then again this spring, I did a marathon panel prep and now have a trailer full of various sizes to choose from. All have five or six coats of gesso already on them but there is still a good deal of texture revealed from the portrait grade canvas that I use…and I do not like this.
On some paintings where I use lots of paint and deliberately rough up the surface, like roiling seas and wind blown landscapes, that texture is just fine and gets hidden quickly in favor of the brushstrokes.
For other works, like finely detailed still lifes and interiors, I want the texture to be of my design, not the canvases.
I have experimented and struggled for years now to produce a reliable and smooth gesso finish. And the first three or four coats which I apply with a wide putty knife go on great. But once that weave begins to fill in every single tiny speck of dust of dog hair or wooly caterpillar fluff gets caught in the sweep of the blade and drags a gully across the panel. UGH !
I tried to get a photo of this to help illustrate the problem…but didn’t have the patience to light it right…here’s a shot of the gesso I have found to be the best for the final coats… Art Boards Gesso which I get from Dick Blick. (This is not a plug for them…just a reference since I had some difficulty finding it in the usual haunts. I have found it to be the best as far as pliability on a rigid surface as well as having just the right tooth for the oils I use.)
I’m eager to get to the easel to work on some of the new ideas I collected while on Martha’s Vineyard last month and I worked all day yesterday to get a sketch ready for the first one up. Last night I hauled out a panel and applied a final coat of the gesso to dry overnight. In the light of morning most of the gesso had smoothed out but there were dozens of those nasty streaks so I got out the sander and took it back down to a uniform level…which or course sanded off more gesso than I wanted so I decided to thin it down and re-apply with a brush.
Disaster. It dries too fast and the brushstrokes become clumpy and no amount of raking light can reveal all the imperfections. With nothing to lose I went back to the putty knife and had a little bit more success leveling out the hills and valleys. But not much.
I’ll have to let this dry and then give it a wet/sand finish which is very time consuming and a big mess…but it does work. You slowly build up a slurry by taking a wet-sandpaper of 400 or 500 grit and progress in small increments. The advantage is that you do not remove any gesso…just smooth it around but it’s tedious work and I am low on patience at the moment.
I’d welcome any thoughts and suggestions on how you other artists handle the gesso messo.
For now that’s enough whining !!! …as Pat says…everything happens for a reason so I must need the practice…and it’s a beautiful grey November day here in the studio yard…
take note if you will …that pole leaning on the lilac bush, circled in red, is the one that drove itself into my sinuses a couple days ago…quite a wake up call…doing just fine now …and the lingering soreness is all the reminder I need to get back to painting thank you !
It is dark now. And it’s been a very long day of frustrating fits and starts. Much ado and almost nothing to show for it.
Last week I had a dream in which a painting began to take shape. A line of pumpkins supporting a pile of corn was the start . At first a shining ear with one glorious pat of butter atop was hovering over the pumpkins. Then the next day the title came into focus…The Philosopher Corn. I liked that but the original butter thing was too cute.
While sitting on the studio porch carving some spoons that afternoon I kept hearing a great swoosh in the trees just before seeing hundreds of migrating birds take flight. And I thought of a Raven…with an ear of corn in its beak… and that was my philosopher. Probably an echo of Jamie Wyeth’s sinful seagulls that I saw last week. But I liked the idea of the oily black feathers against the orange and green fall carpet.
I did a tiny sketch and gave Pat a shopping list. First off, the pumpkins. Well it turns out we are on the cusp of that season. Farmers said look back here on the weekend. And corn is at the other end of its season. Farmers said we probably won’t have any more by the weekend. And…we leave on Tuesday for a month on MV.
Soooo… I drove all over kingdom come and found Pumpkin Hill where I was no doubt the first customer … but I loaded four pumpkins into my wagon and called Pat. Got ’em, now can you go straight over to the orchard and grab all the corn that’s left.
That was two days ago.
Now here I sit tonight, waiting for my ipod gadgets to sync after hours of repairing loopy software, and decided it was time to set up the still life with the harvest. An hour later I am beaten.
Granted, I may be too tired to hear them…but the muses just ain’t helping out here.
This is absolutely hideous.
I hardly ever paint what is exactly in front of me in this kind of a still life…but really…my first little sketch had way more information than this heap.
And I have now ignored my partner and my puppy for most of the day… have two dozen perfectly good ears of corn going to waste…four decent pumpkins (pick of the crop) and a whopping headache in the balance.
Lesson learned…again…
these paintings have a mind of their own and when I try and force them into a tight little box in a crazy busy schedule… I just end up in tears.
I’m not letting go of the title, or the characters in play, but I am turning off this machine, going to shake myself together, find my dog, and head home to my loving partner for the night.
When we were on Martha’s Vineyard in July for the Granary Gallery show we took a day off to be filmed for a spot on Plum TV. Hannah Pillemer, the film maker, producer, editor and interviewer, along with David Rhoderick the intrepid cameraman, did a fine job of making us feel at ease…and our friend Barbara Gordon, aka Ansel Leibowitz, documented the interview for the studio blog.
Here are some photos from our morning in the spotlight, and a link to the video …
It’s been stressful in the studio this week and I have been finding solace in my early morning walks with Finnegan.
It’s not safe to walk a pup on our street so I drive 10 minutes over to a local park and we walk for half an hour or so. The farms along the way are close to harvesting corn and sunflowers and the other morning, when we got a particularly early start…and just as we crested a small hill…the sun was a firey re/pink globe hovering over pockets of mist that hung in the valley of the fields below. I have driven that way every day since and the late August morning mist is there but not that spectacular sun.
Here’s a look at yesterday morning’s mist giving way to the sun…
I have a couple other paintings in the works which the Granary Gallery has requested but I am taking a small detour to work on the challenge of recording these peaceful early morning vistas while they are still fresh in my mind and before the snow flies.
As Polly would say…Shake yourself together ! and indeed I have.
I floated out of the movie theater yesterday afternoon on a cloud of whipped to the peak of perfection egg whites…
Magnifique, Superb and Brilliant !!! I laughed and sobbed through the whole flick and the creme de la creme was the gaggle of three women sitting behind us whispering to each other in FRENCH !!!
Julia Child has been a hero of mine for almost my entire life. I watched along with the early PBS viewers as she brought us into her kitchen and taught us to cook and she was elevated to goddess status when I worked in Cambridge and would catch the occasional glimpse of her regal gait bobbing above the crowd on the cobblestone alleyways. My log cabin kitchen today is surrounded by homages to her genius… from the NY Times Magazine article that quotes her “last meal” suggestions…
to the windchime that has hung outside the door since her passing…
to the cupboards that have her famous quote painted on them to remind and inspire…
Ahhh Julia…
We took Lorrie’s advice and did eat before we sat down to watch…but on the way home we rewrote our shopping list and Herself made a special trip to town to fetch us the fixings for a feast…
A little bruschetta to honor the ripe tomatoes in our garden…
Then a lesson from the movie and an extra step to dry the scallops (not beef this time) to get a good sear…
And of course the money shot…the lobster scream !
And Voila ! we have Seared Scallops for Pat and Lobster Poached in BUTTER for moi…both over a bed of spinach wilted in garlic butter… ( did I mention butter ?)
Ahhhhhh… our tribute was complete with a dish of Haagen Daz velvety chocolate ice cream topped with fresh raspberries…
and we raised our glasses to Chere Julia, and to Julie whose blog was inspirational and gave Nora Ephron the medium to shine once again…to Meryll who simply was breathtaking…to life itself which we know to be the proper binge… and to love which after all else is at the very core of every meal… Salute !
A calm between the storm of fun as the Follansbees make their pilgrimage to Country Workshops where Peter will be giving a workshop in joinery and box making… it is our great fortune to live halfway between MA and NC and so we get to be the watering hole at both ends of their trek.
Rose and Daniel are blossoming into spectacular little humans and as much as I want to stop and document the magic… I would rather not have the camera stopping my eye…there’s simply too much going on to capture.
I did get a couple shots and in between finding long lost fairies amongst the zinnias they planted the last time they were here…and swimming all morning in the lake…and drawing pictures of Finn and alligators on the porch…and telling story after story…Papa and I brought out the spoons bags to compare and take notes and see what each other’s spoons look like now that we’ve been a’ carvin’ for almost thirty years. A fair pile of shavings gathered at the foot of our rockers and mingled with the sidewalk chalk and our conversation seemed to pick up right where we left it …with three year old stories woven through the thin bits…while Mama sat near by knitting and Pat smiled on.
Now this artist heads back to the easel and waits to catch them on the way back through in a few days… ahhhhh.
Well it was a wild week up on the little island of Martha’s Vineyard… the show was a huge success, there were many new adventures, new vistas to investigate, a little bit of poison ivy, lots of early morning walks on the beach, many evenings of friendship and fine feasts, way too many kudos and not nearly enough sushi…and now that we’re home again I am rejuvinated by the enthusiastic response to the new paintings and ready to dig deeper and take the work to a whole new level.
Here is a gallery with some of the highlights of the trip…
check out our little apprentice as she visits the island for the first time…from the big boat to the bigger ocean she was a trooper… she left the last of her puppy teeth there and is now settling in to her cushy day job here in the studio…
another new adventure was being interviewed for Plum TV which has stations in lots of fancy vacation spots…they followed me around for a day with cameras and two delightful cinematographers…and our friend Barb followed them…very much looking the Annie Lebowitz part…
we had our usual techno breakdown on the night of the opening so there are only a couple photos… but I went in the next day and got some shots of the gallery to give you a feel for the place …just imagine a few hundred people milling about with mixed beverages and kind things to say and you’ve got the rest of the picture…
and then there are a few shots of good times with good friends and some views of the pond house where we whiled away the week that was… and of our visit with Ted to Menemsha and a stop over to Jane Slater’s, my teacup muse, and a chance for Ted and Herbert to catch up on some laughs…then, finally, a tight squeeze on the new ferry back over to America…
I’ll let you check this out while Finnegan and I get back to work…
