Blog

Faces in my Vegetable, 2013, digital collage

I started a new painting class this past Saturday - a Christmas gift from my daughter who noticed that since I stopped taking art classes four years ago (due to time constraints from working two jobs and budget constraints from the recession), my painting production had slowed to a snail’s pace, even though I had created a small studio at home expressly for that purpose. I was very grateful for the class, but also intimidated. I had not taken a college-level painting class in such a long time and it was in a medium that I do not usually use - oil or acrylic. I am a watercolor artist and digital photographer. Occasionally I throw in a little golden fluid acrylic, pastel or collage in my paintings for variety, but I paint like a watercolor artist. And the process for painting in watercolor is different from the standard painting process.

But I found that I adapted very well - at least in the class. The first assignment was to paint a monochrome tone study of an object in black and white, something I never do as a watercolor artist, because I avoid both black and white like the plague when painting in watercolor. When I do rarely use black, I find it is better to mix it from the colors on my palette instead of using black out of the tube - that way the resulting black has much more depth and is more interesting, and for white I leave the white of the paper. I also love color, so I rarely do monochrome tone studies unless it is for an assignment or a special request.

My Vegetable, digital photograph (set up for painting)

Little did I know that the subject for my painting, an innocuous looking squash-shaped thing with skin that looked like a potato, would turn out to be a possessed vegetable and prove to be one of the most difficult things that I have ever tried to paint. I set up my vegetable on a desk to the right of my easel. I placed it at about a 30 degree angle pointing away from me to the left, so that it was foreshortened somewhat, and the large bottom looked even larger than it was. Because I almost never finish a painting in one sitting - a production artist I will never be - I took some photos of my vegetable, so I could finish the painting in my home studio. And that is where the fun (NOT) began …

When I tried to finish the painting from the photo instead of the actual vegetable, I just could not do it. Every stroke looked wrong. My original drawing seemed way off. I tried again and again and finally, frustrated and furious, I broke down and had a full fledged temper tantrum on it. I painted it out to start over again from scratch, something I rarely do. Usually I will keep working through a difficulty in a painting. Or stop and look at it another day, when I either see what the problem is, or I find something to like about it in its present form. Sometimes in watercolor I will wash off a painting or an area of a painting, when I overdo it; but then a faint underpainting remains as a guide. Acrylic, however, does not wash off once it has dried, and my wounded ego wanted to obliterate the source of my frustration. So obliterate it I did.

Discouraged and heartbroken, but refusing to end the day defeated, I took some pastels and tried laying in a drawing for Vegetable #2, this time having to paint it solely from the photograph of my vegetable. Had I been thinking more clearly I would have realized that painted board does not have the tooth to hold pastel, but I was not thinking terribly clearly at the time and I was determined. I drew and drew, but I could not get the drawing in perspective. Finally, exhausted from six hours in painting class and another six-eight hours of painting and re-drawing at home, I gave up, used fixative to set my drawing in the stage that it was at, and decided to sleep on it.

Faces in my Vegetable, pastel on painted clayboard (drawing for painting)

The next morning I got up and looked at my drawing, and there, plain as day, were two faces in my vegetable, one looking straight out at me and one looking backwards. I had not been aware of any faces the night before when I put down the pastels and went to bed. Even though I could now see what I needed to do to correct the drawing (it is amazing what a little sleep will do for that!), I decided to go ahead and paint what I had. I figure those faces must need to be seen. I have no clue why. But seen they will be. And so I began painting anew to see where this two-headed potato-squash thing would lead me.

For the new painting, I decided to paint only what I saw in my drawing and not to refer back to my original photograph. To me the painting was now about the faces that I saw there, and not about the vegetable vessel. Since I  had used up all of my Titanium White and Ivory Black in my previous attempt, this time I used Golden Fluid Acrylic Paynes Grey and Zinc White, Pearlescent White Pearl Liquid Acrylic and Golden Fluid Acrylic GAC 700 medium. I painted the darkest darks first, applying the paint directly on top of the pastel drawing on the painted clayboard. For the darkest areas I used Paynes Grey only mixed with a little GAC 700 medium. I mixed pure Zinc White with a little White Pearl to paint in the lightest lights. Next I created a tone range from Dark Grey to Mid-Grey to White by mixing the Paynes Grey with varying amounts of Zinc White and White Pearl. I used these mixes to paint in the rest of the painting, adding more or less GAC 700 medium, depending on the transparency that I wanted to achieve. Because the vegetable was cylindrical, I tried to make my brushstrokes follow the outward curve of the cylinder to give it more dimension.

Faces in my Vegetable, 2013, acrylic (work in process)

My final steps will be to add another semi-transparent layer for smoother blending in some areas of the painting, and perhaps to add one or more transparent layers of mottled skin to my vegetable, now that the faces in it are firmly entrenched. On the other hand, I may decide to follow the course that I stated at the outset of this second painting and make it solely about the faces that I saw in my vegetable, without concerning myself with the outer appearance of the vessel. For that reason, this artwork is still a work in process. When it is complete, it will become available for purchase on my website at http://annaporterartist.com. Check back on my website to see the final painting.