Reworked Leather

Posted on April 1, 2011 by pearce

The more time I spent looking at the painting the more I realized how many things were not well finished, so I began repainting substantial portions of the work in white and brown to make it ready for glazing. The left photo shows the repainted chest and neck with a second layer of painting en grisaille that has brought the hair still further to the right, correcting an overly wide neck and beginning to place the sinews in the right locations, although a little more editing will be necessary to get everything properly balanced. I’ve given her her missing hand, positioned almost as if she’s a gunfighter ready to draw from the hip.

The pants are half way done and clearly need further work to correct them, because presently poor Amelia lacks a backside.

In the second picture the leather has been reworked to give her forearm some shape, which it lacked before; I’ve also added highlights and shadows to the shoulder and the cuff of the sleeve, and reworked the hair with highlights and additional detail. When the leather and hair have been re-glazed I believe this alteration will pay off by giving Amelia a more dynamic action in her arm.

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Pants

Posted on March 31, 2011 by pearce

I spent some time bringing white and grey to the neck, hair, shirt, jacket and pants to bring some substance to these areas of the painting, first noticing that Amelia’s neck was over-simplified and in need of re-modeling. Shaping the neck with hair on the left side, I’ve reworked the highlights to bring more complex shape to the area where the clavicles meet at the base of the neck.

The shirt was overly simple, so I’ve begun adding some folds into the fabric of her shirt, perhaps adding some pattern later. The leather jacket’s texture and colour are both good, but the design of the lapel on the right needed a little reworking, so I’ve put some whites in to add reflections and the stitched seams. Finally, I began work on the right leg, where the light should brighten the fabric so that limb comes forward from the jacket. Everything is white and grey in preparation for glazing.

It sounds like I’ll be able to shoot pictures for the musicians in the Priestess painting on Sunday. I hope so. I want to have a plan for the next big painting. Ally showed me the fabric that she picked up Sunday, which looks like it will be perfect for the dress, being sheer and clingy, so it should create lots of folding drapes. She’s getting started making the dress now, so perhaps we’ll be ready in a week or so.

My colleague (and neighbor) the awesome theatrical designer Nate Sinnott says he will help with the rigging for the hanged man, so I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that I’ll get reference shots for both Priestess and Hanged Man this fortnight.

While I rode my bicycle to the cafe to pick up milk for tea I noticed a particularly interesting plant that I remember my father talking about; he said the acanthus was the leaf that was used for corinthian columns in Greek and Roman architecture. I stopped to snap some reference pictures with my phone, planning to paint some of these dramatic leaves in the right side foreground around where Amelia stands.

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Amelia Earheart is Back

Posted on March 29, 2011 by pearce

I’ve returned to the studio after taking a few days break for rest and recuperation, returning to the unfinished work on Amelia Beheads the Alchemical King. A new layer of leaves is filling out the layer of birch leaves at the top of the painting, but painted so that they come towards us rather than the side view that the previous branches were at. As usual I’m painting the leaves in a light grey first, which will be glazed with a yellow and green, with touches of Iron Oxide Red around the edges.

It’s quite refreshing to have a smaller painting on the easel, and feels rather strange to return to this piece, which I haven’t touched for a pretty long time. I’m rethinking the composition of the bottom right corner of the piece, which was never really thoroughly painted, perhaps adding some large leaved plants that like watery environments, and I’m not satisfied with the work I did on Amelia’s  body, with the exception of her jacket and head. I think I’ll add more flower buds to the roses, and some more leaves to fill them out with another layer of detail. They feel a little flat right now.

Ally has bought the fabric for the dress for the Priestess, and I’m continuing to figure  out what the rest of the painting is going to look like. The musicians are all the same model, holding different musical instruments, whispering as they face the uncertainty of their audience sleeping: should they play more, or retire? I hope to shoot pictures of the musicians this weekend, once I’ve done a little more sketching to figure out how they’re standing.

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Four Large Tarot Paintings

Posted on March 24, 2011 by pearce

I’m very pleased to be able to share these four images with you. They’re the result of a year and a half of painting.

The Angel of Death, The Magician, The Empress, The Traveler.

All Oil on Canvas, 96″ x 96″. Copyright Michael Pearce 2011

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The Symbolism of the Priestess

Posted on March 23, 2011 by pearce

The virile energy of the fool and the manifested energy of the magician precede the energy of creation and order found in the image of the Priestess. In Case’s deck the Priestess sits solidly between the two pillars of the dyad, but the Marseilles deck conceals them beneath a veil behind her, with just a hint of carved stone on her left, suggesting that the triune mystery has not been revealed in fullness. In this card access through the pillars has not yet been opened, being guarded by an unusual watchwoman.

Some Tarot aficionados have attempted to explain the Priestess with a shocking anecdote that satisfies our human attraction to scandal, discovering that a distant cousin of the Sforza family, was executed for her heretical role as Pope Joan, the unfortunate female pope. Unfortunately, although the High Priestess is shown wearing the three layered papal tiara, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this was not necessarily a reference to poor Joan and doesn’t mean that this was the image of some sort of Gnostic female pope; instead the tiara was used to establish this kind of picture as an allegory for the handmaiden of Christ: the body of the church. She holds a book on her lap – the holy writings; to this day the Catholic Church’s role is as the protector of the dogmatic tradition of the word of God; a role that the heirs to St. Peter have fiercely protected. The Priestess is the church; her book is the holy writings.

(excerpted from my tarot journal)

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Big Stretch

Posted on March 23, 2011 by pearce

We’ve stretched the canvas over the panel ready for the Priestess, now we need to give it a few coats of gesso before the drawing begins. Ally has drawings of the dress made and Veronica has been measured for the fit, so as soon as it’s stitched and the hat made we’ll be ready to go. Meanwhile, I’ve found one of my male students who’s prepared to be the model for the Hanged Man, so I want to get the rig for the gravity boots set up so we can shoot reference pictures as soon as possible.

On the left of the photo you can catch a glimpse of a painting I’m doing for my mother of her brother (my Uncle Harry) and his wife (my Aunt Betty). It couldn’t be better timing for a little painting like this, right in between projects. I’ve done the first rough layer of Harry’s face en grisaille over a rich Burnt Sienna ground that will warm up the flesh nicely.

In the middle of the photo there’s a glimpse of a lovely blue that I painted as the sky for a small Temperance. I don’t remember why I stopped work on it, perhaps I was just distracted from it, but I think I should do a little more to it and complete it. The bars behind it in the stack against the wall are the stretchers for the Amelia Beheads the Alchemical King painting in which she’s reaching for the ball of light, which also needs little work to be complete.

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Preparing

Posted on March 21, 2011 by pearce

(Joseph at work on the left, the panel waiting for canvas at right) Joe and I pulled my old Geomantic Man icon from its panel so that we are ready to stretch a new canvas for the Priestess. It’s a nice light panel made with plywood over a 1″ x 2″ frame, sturdy, but not too heavy. I’ll stretch some plastic over it first, then we’ll put canvas onto it, finishing up with some gesso to make her ready to work. The Geomantic Man now faces my office door, where it’s hanging on the wall in the studio.

 

 

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Popular Taste in Painting (for less than $500)

Posted on March 21, 2011 by pearce

I came across this unusual survey of what people like in paintings. There are some surprises here, including the difference in taste found in different countries, and the price that people are prepared to spend on art.

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The Hanged Man and the Priestess

Posted on March 21, 2011 by pearce

After a tiring weekend dealing with excessive rain that caused all sorts of trouble including a leaking roof close to the new paintings, everything is now back to normal and we were able to continue as planned, so Brian Stethem came in this morning for a delightfully problem free photo shoot. I’ll post the results as soon as he sends me the files. Taking photos of paintings can be tricky because they often reflect light, causing strange things to happen to the images, so we moved the big easel to the centre of the studio, away from the windows. Although the rain was a pain this weekend, today the cloud cover gave us a lovely evenly diffused light.

All four of the paintings are ready to be removed from the panels and put onto stretcher bars, making them much easier to move around, and facilitating easier shipping.

I’m getting ready to start on the Priestess and the Hanged Man. The former might well turn out to be the first interior of the series. In this piece the Priestess is sleeping beside a doorway, with four musicians close by playing beautiful music. I really enjoyed painting that marble courtyard for the Empress, I think I’ll explore stone surfaces a little more in this painting.

The Hanged Man is going to take a little more preparation because I’m going to have to rig some pipe so that my model can be safely suspended upside down by one foot.

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Penultimate

Posted on March 18, 2011 by pearce

This has been a day of almost finishing.

I’ve added a little Iron Oxide Orange to the flames, making them look nicely fiery, and almost concluding the work on the Magician painting with the exception of a little lightening of the right arm. I added a light touch of the same colour to the right hand edges of the silver circles in the belt, making them vibrate a little more than they did when they were just blue. I’ll drop in a little highlighting tomorrow.

I never did paint the Wormwood on the right side of the Empress, so I pulled out some greens and painted that, a la prima, completing the work that was missing from that piece.

Finally, I pulled out the Angel of Death and did a bit of work on the right hand wing which lacked the peacock feathers at the top, where they emerge from the wrist of the skeleton, then added a lot of Sap Green strands around the neck and top edges of the wings. Once the white is covered and shadows deepened with Sap Green the Angel will be complete too.

I expect to complete all four paintings tomorrow, if all goes well. Brian Stethem is coming over Monday morning to take some really good pictures of them, so this weekend is a chance to clean up any shortcomings I think are necessary, although I’ve often changed paintings long after they’ve been exhibited, so I might alter things, even now…

 

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