This morning I spent some time with the snowstorm photo, improving the composition (left out the deer), working hard to keep my values correct, and having some fun.
I’m working on a large portrait that’s been taking up my time. 12 hours into this picture and I just started painting today. You can see process shots on Instagram @margaret.sloan.
This is pretty much what I look like, dear readers, although I might have smoothed out the bags under my eyes, and neglected to paint the complete truth about hair color. I come from a red-face family, and my cheeks are often nearly that crimson, although in this painting they might have been exaggerated just a bit by the new tube of Daniel Smith quinacridone rose. Awesome color. I’m afraid to do a light test on it…
I love to draw, almost more than anything else (except maybe eat), but I spent all this morning with a pencil in my hand, and by this afternoon, I was just tired of it. This little painting was done with only two pencil marks, one to mark the top of the head and one to mark the angle of the chin. Everything else was by brush alone.
And after 2 weeks of arguing with Aquabord, I decided to do my daily painting on PAPER! Although it wasn’t my beloved 300# hot press, it was still Arches, cotton rag torn out of a block. Ah, back home again.
Although I tried to limit myself to 1 hour, when the ringer went off, I had to mess with it just a half hour more to bring it into some sort of completion.
I’ve been wanting to paint this image for a while. I snapped this photo at Columbia Historic State Park last year.
It reminds me of two of my cousins. I’m not going to say they were sweet little girls, although they were. But they were also holy terrors, and a super amount of fun to visit.
I’m challenging myself (yes, once again) to make and post a painting a day for the month of January, and to participate in Leslie Saeta’s annual January Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days. I usually paint everyday (with the exception of Christmas holidays, when painting is bumped off by what seems like round-the-clock cooking), but I don’t post to my blog everyday. We’ll see how I do for the month of January.
I’ve got no theme, other than to try to limit how much time I spend on these daily paintings, so I don’t take away time from larger projects. Today’s painting is a study for a larger painting that involves deer. If you follow me on Instagram (@Margaret.Sloan), I’m posting small bits of this bigger painting as I make them. I have to be finished by the 8th of January (the submission date for the Animalscapes show) so that is when I’ll unveil the whole painting.
I’m working on Aquaboard, a rather new surface for me, and painting a deer is a rather new subject matter, so I’m feeling my way through, making lots of studies.
The last few days have been clear and cold leading up to the calendar roll over. Today I drew a wonderful model, then had a long chat with a good friend. Tonight we played for a contra dance, then drove home under Orion wheeling through the sky. A satisfying New Year ‘s Eve.
I am grateful for my life. For good food, heat, peace. For sable brushes, burnt sienna and Mayan blue. For music, dancers, and silly jokes. But most of all grateful for friends, my wonderful family, and my most excellent fiddler.
And I’m grateful that you, dear reader, choose to spend some moments with me in cyberspace.
Happy New Year to you all.
There are only a few days remaining to see my paintings at the Atherton Library (They are closed New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day). I’ll be taking down the show on Tuesday, January 5. So if you have time and are in the Bay Area, I hope you’ll stop by and see them before they get boxed up.
I want to thank Betty Ullman of the Atherton Arts Foundation, for suggesting me as an exhibiting artist for the library, and for always being so supportive of my art career. She rocks, big time!
I also want to thank Mara Cota and the library staff for putting up with the disruption as my dad and I rather animatedly hung the show.
And last, but never least, I want to thank my dad for always helping out by lending not just his height, strength, and handyman knowledge, but also his excellent aesthetics when hanging my artwork.
You can find out more about the Atherton Library here: http://www.smcl.org/content/atherton
And I know you’ll enjoy visiting the Atherton Arts Foundation website here: http://athertonarts.org
The day darkens and I can no longer see well enough to paint. On the longest night of the year I will sit by the fire and draw while the fiddler reads to me.
Keep your hearth fires burning bright.
Saturday night the fiddler had a gig in Columbia State Historic Park playing tunes for the annual Lamplight Tours. Docents dressed like they stepped out of 1849 give tours of Columbia, and players perform skits so that you can see what it might have been like when the West was still wild. Afterwards in Angelo’s Hall there was dancing, cake, and merriment. And beautiful costumes.
I am always amazed at the time and effort the docents take in creating their costumes. Corsets and collars, tucks and pleats, hand-crocheted lace and yards of trim: All the details are researched and historically accurate, I’m told. Right down to what’s under the crinolines. The ladies looked like flowers spinning on the dance floor.
I always covet these dresses. Someday, when I learn to sew…
Of course I had to sketch the dance (when I wasn’t playing tunes).
I was off my game, though, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine. The previous day I’d had a procedure that would have been unimaginable during the Gold Rush. Thankfully the doctor gave me a two-year pass until the next time I need the test. I’m certified cancer-free! Yippeee! No wasting sickness for me. If I’d had a long dress, I’d have been spinning with the other girls.
But the drugs block the signal between my brain and hand. I could remember tunes, but my fingers wouldn’t play them. While drawing, I fumbled and erased a lot. But it was still fun to capture an older entertainment with an even older technology.
Really, more people should get out and dance. It’s a lot of fun.
I’ll be teaching a portrait drawing class December 10, 2015 at Town Hall Arts/Galerie Copper in Copperopolis. Hope to see you there.
How in the world do non-musicians spend their time? The day after Thanksgiving, I attended a music party where tunes raged, fueled by left-over turkey, cranberry sauce, and chocolate-pudding pie.
I knew there were going to be a lot of American Old-Time tunes, which I don’t usually play (I’m more of an Irish-jig-and-reel girl). But I didn’t want to be left behind while the fiddler had fun, so I brought my trusty sketchbook and practiced portraits on the fly.
Drawing a moving target is tough. You can see in these sketches lines that have been partially erased because my subject shifted or stopped playing and I had to start again. Drawing at a musical house party means waiting for a waltzing couple to stop dancing into my line of vision. It means paying attention to the tune so that I know how much longer I have before the musicians stop playing and take a break to drink, eat, or simply gab. It means that I might suddenly have to stop drawing because Hey! I know that tune!
Often, when I teach life drawing, students complain when the model moves. Indeed, that is frustrating, and I used to whine about it too. But then I realized that humans aren’t statues; we twitch and wiggle and shift. We move.
So if you can’t count on the model being still, what do you do?
I wish everybody would find the joy in music, and not just as consumers, but as participants. I especially wish for everyone the joy of playing these folk traditions, where people play together, having musical conversations rather than performances. If you’re interested in learning more and live in the Bay Area, please check out the following links.
Santa Clara Fiddlers Association
http://www.scvfa.org/
California State Old Time Fiddlers Association
http://www.csotfa.org/
Fiddler Magazine
http://www.fiddle.com/Home.page
Mockingbirds at midnight 