Kimono, with Wallpaper

Here's the final of the kimono painting I've been working on.  It started out with just the model in the kimono, then I added the mirror, added the wallpaper, then the plant, and finally switched around darks, lights, warms, cools to arrive at this.  What I hoped for was luminosity and a rich variety of patterns to unify the painting.   What I resisted -- painting the face, painting the kimono's very intricate patterns and sacrificing feeling for detail.

Kimono, Reflected

I took the earlier painting of the kimono and used it to create this new painting, placing the figure at the right and adding a mirror to reflect her image.

In the studio today, I was able to add the placement of her hand in the reflection, but decided against adding more details or getting deeply into the kimono patterns as I did in the earlier painting.

Instead, I was thinking of Vuillard and his use of patterned wallpaper and fabrics to tie a composition together, so I added the patterned wallpaper and mirror decorative edge.

Museum Inspirations

I went to the Hirshhorn Friday to see the Ai Weiwei exhibit in its last two days.  It was alternately mind-altering, amazing, provocative and occasionally ridiculous (he's even done a video parody of Gangnam Style).  What I was most struck by as a work of art was the imagination and craft of the Moon Chest, 7 of 80+ tall cabinets with round cut-outs that lined up to reveal the phases of the moon.  The other thing I can't get out of my mind is the juxtaposition of the works that reflected the rubble and human devastation of the Sichuan earthquake with Ai Weiwei's own smashing or painting on top of ancient pottery.  

Today I saw the Anna Ancher and Skagen Art Colony exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and attended a gallery talk about Ancher.  Much more within my comfort zone, although during Ancher's time, it was a rare and radical woman who became a painter.  Ancher could do so because she lived at her family's hotel and was able to leave the "woman's" duties -- cooking, etc. -- to staff at the hotel.  Her work was beautiful and emotionally rich and her love of the effects of light went from a supporting element to a dominating one in her paintings.

All very inspiring.  Now, back to my studio.

Kimono Painting

Great morning painting a kimono.  I had a smallish 18 x 24 canvas, and I think this may call for a really big painting.  The model will be posing for 3 more days and I just might have to get out a 5 ft tall canvas to really get into the kimono.  I will have to check my supply of cadmium red light.

Not my favorite costume...

We've got this model posing for the next four days.  In this costume that evokes "gypsy-Playboy bunny."  I think she has some feathers in her hair.  Ugh.  I know great painters have painted gypsies, clowns, ballerinas and all sorts of garish garb.  But thigh-high fishnets?  Really?

The costume has very rigid upper bustier parts, which I am fighting with -- the model is more relaxed in the chair than her outfit would have you believe, so I need to work on that.

Portrait in the Studio

It was a quick one, but it made my afternoon.  The paint is shiny, so there's sparkles of light in the photo that aren't really there.

Morning Studio

I was some distance from the model today, which proved to be a good thing -- hard to obsess over details when you really do see the model as a whole.  Both of these sketches were done very quickly.

Blissful Afternoon in the Studio

I  usually paint in the morning, mostly because it's time I can carve out more easily than other times of day.  Today, an "ice" delay held up my morning, so I dropped in on a late afternoon studio session.  There weren't so many painters, people were very quiet, very relaxed.  Ok, there was one woman "painting" on an iPad, she wasn't exactly in the same space I was.  Anyway, what a blissful way to spend the time and end up with a painting that captures just what I saw and felt.

Repainting, rethinking

I picked up the streaked, bleached, stained painting from Quartermaine's and washed it (as best I could) with Gamsol.  It removed most of the lemon pulp but left behind the stains from coffee and red fruit.  I realized I have to repaint the entire painting to cover the spots and streaks left behind.  You get a certain loose feeling when there's nothing you can salvage but the idea.

I always try to build on what I knew worked from before, but I never was satisfied with.  I decided the color was the first thing that I needed to fix.   Warm up the colors in the sun, make the colors in the shade both cooler and brighter.  Loosen up the figures.

The original painting is on the left.  The new, partially repainted version, still a work in progress, is on the right.  A little of the dull/darkness of the painting on the left is the photo quality, but a lot of it is the painting.  I'm thinking this repainting is working.

 

Installation at Quartermaine's

I brought in the painting of Steve testing coffees (cupping is the official name) and we put it up today.

I took down the painting that had been there, splattered with juice, coffee and lemon pulp.  It was a mess!  I have scrubbed away at it using Gamsol to get the residue off and will start trying to repaint and restore it next.