Heartsong Studio

5 or 6 years ago I painted a large canvas out of despair titled Dawn of a New Year. It depicted an ocean view of a sunrise through very dark looming clouds, darts of cold rain sliced down and drops hung on forlorn branches of a bare tree. Pretty depressing.

This February I got it out with an idea from an old Bing Crosby song. If you’re too young to remember WWII, it probably won’t pluck at your heartstrings.

Here’s an old vinyl Youtube recording:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lN_6P509Dw&feature=related

Some of the words are:

It’s June in January, because I’m in love,
It always is spring in my heart with you in my arms.
The snow is just white blossoms that fall from above.
And here is the reason, my dear, your magical charms.
The night is cold, the trees are bare,
But I can feel the scent of roses in the air.
It’s June in January, because I’m in love,
But only because I’m in love with you.

Here’s my old canvas of despair updated with pink blossoms and lightening sky to become my valentine to the world in 2011.

Click on picture to enlarge:

It’s June in January
30″ X 40″ acrylic on canvas

After I mustered the courage to attempt this painting, I knew it would be a challenge. I had no idea that it would be the hardest thing I’ve ever painted.  While it was challenging, loads of fun and well worth the effort, I also learned a lot.

Here’s a portrait of my friend Nicola with her baby boy Morgan.
Click on the photo to enlarge.

Sweet Slumber 16″ X 20″

To paint this portrait with the subjects absent, a photo was an indispensable reference. I was fortunate to have several good photos of them both, taken by Morgan’s dad, Shelby.

Even though a reference photo is most useful, there comes a time when the photo needs to be put away. There’s a real risk of it becoming a technical exercise in copying instead of a painting from the artist’s own experience of the subjects. Small distortions, omissions, etc., on purpose or accidentally, often reveal truths of the artist’s relationship, conscious or not. This is at the heart of art.

This photo was also misleading in another way. Its composition is interesting, featuring a strong shadow from a window thrown across both faces. The shadows are so dark though that details within the shadows are barely discernible.

The original photo

In real life, shadows aren’t like this. Check it out for yourself, as I did. You can see a lot of detail within even strong shadows, and in this one there were many shadows within shadows too.

In a photo, shadows on skin usually look dark gray, whereas in reality, the colours of shadows on skin appear different on different skin tones. Warm flesh tones have cool shadows, and cool flesh tones have warm shadows, for example.

The more colourblind a person is, the better their ability to see values (lights and darks). People like me who are very colour sensitive are challenged to see values as easily. So I took the time to imagine it in black and white. When I moved the photo around different lights, I began to see more detail.

How to keep from covering up so much luscious detail with dark gray paint?

Instead of mixing black + white, which is very opaque, one way of handling shadows on skin is to produce interesting grays by mixing only the three primary colours in transparent acrylic paint. Though the same colours are in each, the different proportions can make ever so many different grays.

Of course, they are all too dark, so instead of adding white and rendering them opaque, I simply added lots of water, and applied it in layers, giving me some control of varying darkness.

Another reason to put away the reference photo is so that your feeling about the subject has a chance of being expressed. At many stages along the way, I felt very excited about coming pretty close. Though I added many little touch-ups at the end, I knew it was accomplished when I watched myself sign it.

The truest evaluation of this work for me was after I’d first sketched the outline on the canvas. Morgan, now 3, came with his parents for a visit. He walked right into my studio and announced: “That’s Mom and me!” His mom paints too, as you can see on her blog:

http://www.seasquirt.org/

For now, it hangs in my entrance hall, where the light changes radically. It looks especially good in dim light, though this effect doesn’t show very well in my photo. The camera is no replacement for eyes.