I’m working on getting these hands right, and moving over to the lad on the right side of the painting. It’s been surprisingly humid here this past few days, so the paint is taking a long time to dry, narrowing the areas of opportunity to improve the piece. I may have to move back to the skeleton while this one settles down.
When areas of a painting are wet and inaccessible there is a particularly handy trick to allow a painter to get over them and continue working: a simple maul stick, which is held in the left hand and rested against a side of the canvas so that the right hand can lean against its shaft without touching the surface of the painting. You can buy them in the store, or save your money and get a short dowel rod for next to nothing, then tape a rag over the end of it. I’ve had mine for at least fifteen years, made from a piece of half round dowel that was lying around the wood-shop and half an old sock, wrapped up in that blue paper masking tape. It cost nothing to make – a pretty good investment in such a useful tool. I like to paint on canvas that’s been stretched over a wood panel, so I get to put the end of the stick anywhere that doesn’t have any wet paint on it, but on the bigger canvases you have to lean against the stretcher bar edges, or risk pushing the canvas, causing dents.
Even with the help of the maul stick I was unable to proceed any further with the boys, so I moved down to the blackened ground, where I needed to define some features of the broken and lumpy earth.
I thought I would add a little to the previous post by commenting that the hair on the boy on the left is grey now so that it can become blonde later – in the next layer I’ll put some semi-transparent raw sienna over what you see here to produce a pretty convincing mop of hair. I want to make one boy blonde and the other dark, emphasizing the two differing aspects of salt and sulphur generated from the nigredo. Although the two are generated from the same material, they are subtly opposed, hence the dark and light of their towels, blonde and dark hair, black and white pillars (Boaz and Jachin).
Back in the studio at last, working on the face of my son, who is both of the twins in this painting. I like to redefine the features of the face and hands at least twice during the process of making a painting – this is the second drawing of this face in the process of making this piece, and it’s coming along nicely. There’s lots of work to do here though, no rest for the wicked. It’s good to be able to compare the quality of this face to the earlier loose rendering that the right hand twin had.
  
Here’s the complete first layer of the bone man. I did a bit of research on scythes, being uncertain of the appearance of those  found in the old cards because I remember using one when I was a kid mowing the long grass in the field behind our house, and being scared of the size and sharpness of the curving blade. I found that actually there are straight handled scythes and “S” handled scythes, so the image in the Marseille deck turned out to be somewhat correct after all.
I haven’t painted a complete skeleton for a very long time – I think since I was a student at Swindon College of Art and Design in 1983, which seems a ridiculously long time ago – so working on the Death card is an exciting and rewarding  challenge. My Drawing students will understand the intimidation I felt when I began this, because accurately rendering the bone structure of the human body is a seriously complex piece of work, particularly the rib cage, which is a multi-layered inter-connected three dimensional nightmare to get right. Persistence! The skull has challenges of its own, but these can be surmounted by careful observation.
