The skull saga continues with a few more completed in the third layer, and the one on the right half way toward being finished. Seven and a half done, seventeen and a half to go.
Paul left yesterday morning to return to his home, leaving his sculpture to be encased in silicone and fiberglass for the wax version to be made ready for bronzing. We had such a good time while he was here, I’ll miss him.
Pretty rough and ready, but the basics are there. I’ll need to do some improvement to the teeth in particular, because they’re wildly oversimplified. Something’s not quite right about the right eye, too. It’s a little too low and too small, so I’ll lift that up next chance I get.
Paul’s getting ready to go home to West Virginia, so we’re having a farewell party this evening to send him on his way. It’s been great to have him as a guest and to watch the sculpture taking shape as he has worked on it in the garage to complete it.
I completed another skull and got half way through the next this afternoon, leaving twenty one to go. This is epic skull painting! I enjoyed having Terry Spehar Fahey’s company in the studio this afternoon, she’s working on a painting about birth and fertility while I’m working on all this death imagery – quite a contrast – although painting the angel of death at Halloween seems singularly appropriate!
The skulls are getting easier by repetition, and the teeth, which of course are the trickiest part, are becoming less challenging. I’m enjoying the chocolate tones of the brown, but I’m already contemplating how colour will work in the later stages of the painting. I’m interested in the blue-green shimmer of the feathers of ravens and crows, and the iridescence of peacocks.
Me, painter Mia Tavonatti and sculptor Paul Lucchesi at my house following a delicious Halloween dinner. I’m enjoying sharing my home with my friends so much. It’s a joy to be surrounded by such delightful people all the time, the house is such a good place to be. We celebrated Halloween by making a really good meal, drinking some excellent wine and recalling the names of the dead together, then celebrating their lives.
Today I have got to get back on track in the studio, it’s time to get to work!
Here we go. I thought it would be interesting to show the layers of paint going down on the skulls as they are built, so here we have two pictures of the same three skulls side by side. The black layer is he underpainting of gesso, then there’s a white layer of sketched bones over that, and now a brown layer that defines the shapes of the shadows more clearly. The teeth are unfinished on the skull on the left.
I hope to get the entire floor of skulls done within the next two weeks, for my time is slightly less occupied by exhibits in the gallery and other projects.
That flu that’s going around thoroughly beat me up last week, on top of needing to be focused on Mia’s exhibit in the gallery, so my studio time took a back seat. I get quite grumpy when I don’t get to paint.
I’ve been so busy with the gallery that it’s been hard to get into the studio until today. At last I found a few hours this evening to work on fixing the spine, which had been bothering me for a long time. Now it has some highlights and some tighter definition that sets it forward from the feathery background. I also worked on highlights on the ribs, using the Ceramic White that Steve Aufhauser asked me to try. I really like this white – it’s got such a bright high end when you lay it down thick, and a lovely glaze like that of Zinc when it’s thin. Very nice.
If you’re anywhere near Thousand Oaks, California this month, do yourself a favor and swing by the Kwan Fong Gallery at CLU to have a visual feast at the exhibit of Mia Tavonatti’s “Paintings from Svelata”. Really lovely romantic paintings of a beautiful woman suspended in water and fabric. Opening reception this Saturday night at 7pm.
  Here he is with two wings worth of third layer work! Highlights to follow to pop the feathers from each other.
  Things are moving fast now, and I’m on a roll that is letting me paint fluidly and well. The wing’s third layer is complete, so I’m moving over to the right hand side.Â
Using a half inch flat hog bristle to slap on the Van Dyke brown, then a towel to bring in texture, a soft t-shirt rag to soften the quality of the paint, and finishing with a 00 liner to pop in the details and dark shadows between feathers.
Once the third layer is complete on both wings I think I’ll move to something else, just to feel a little variety for a short time.
I was chatting with Nathan Tierney last night as we sat around the dinner table with Paul Lucchesi and Janet Amiri, when he pointed out that there is a difference between complication and complexity. He mentioned that the following comes from writer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.Â
If we take a mess of paint and spread it about on the floor, then consider the relationships between different objects and correspondences within it, we may find ourselves immersed in the study of a complicated pattern, but lacking meaning, coherence or order.
If we arrange the elements of a painting, thoughtfully constructing it so that its various parts become a considered work, it may be made of the same number of pigments, but the end result is complex, not complicated, and may offer meaning to the viewer.Â
The interest we have had in the deconstruction of art for the last hundred years is complicated and diverting, but leads nowhere, being a deep study of randomness.
Complexity may be difficult to understand, but challenges us to explore and comprehend the meaning of the works presented to us. Complex works offer order and grace, perhaps even ultimately leading to integrated transcendence.
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What a great morning of painting. I really enjoyed myself today, getting the left side wing halfway complete with some lovely variations from dark to light in a very satisfying third layer that develops the detail of the painting. I love the feeling of being completely immersed in the practice of making the painting, it’s wonderful; better than anything in the world.
I used a little stuffed hawk for inspiration for the feathers, borrowed from the biology department, he’s a bit sad, but has the patterns in the feathers of a predator, which is what I’m looking for for death.Â
I realized that this is death wearing a cloak of feathers rather than death as a winged being. At this stage I’m considering what details might be interesting added to the piece, so I’d expect to see some leather straps and other hidden little secrets emerging in the next month.
