This is the stage of a drawing when the positive fights the negative, being and non-being begin to jump back and forth for attention – and which area identifies as which is entirely up to you. One just has to trust that everything will find its place in the end. An end that is coming right up – I don’t go back.
Sometimes, you have to stop right in the middle of something because the front door blows open (lots of snow in the living room!) and the lights flicker. I have the woodstove cranked up and a flashlight in my pocket, and I’ll just have to redraw some of what I did tonight in tomorrow’s episode. Now, a break for shoveling.
Back to work on Asters in a Blue Mason Jar tonight, and making decisions about yellow.
Third in a series of work in progress photos of asters in a blue Mason jar. Tonight’s surprise was the amount of green in the rudebekia, to have it be orange next to all that mauve. I’m hoping it stays “orangey” even after the blue glass jar goes in, because I’m still not one hundred percent in the kind of chess champion mentality it takes to figure that out.
I’ve never posted a drawing-in-progress; it seems like cheating. Finishing a piece is a real rush for me and considering it before completion is rushing dessert, but here it is. I feel this is a sea change in the underlayment of my drawings and I’m enjoying working over the black, faintly gnarly structure.
I’ll post follow-ups as work continues. As an aside, WordPress wanted to change underlayment to undergarment, and maybe that’s the way to think about it.
Grape jelly in the cool winter light of the hoop house. Pastel on board, 16 x 20.
The autumn studio is home to still life set-ups featuring pumpkins,poppies and pink, angled October light – fodder for big paintings during the long, cold winter ahead.
Hansa roses and a sterling tea set on a sunny summer afternoon. Pastel on board, 18′ x 24″.
This is a study for a larger work that also features with roses, watermelon, green grapes and tiger lilies. I thought I ought to be familiar with some of the basic parts before I start on the larger chaos.
Tea Pot Study, 14" x 14", pastel on board
with new work. This is “Watermelon and Pears”, pastel, 24 x 18 inches on board.
I have one more drawing planned from my set-ups in the hoop house over the summer. The light in there is diffuse and very white. I plan to start the 2010 flower season by constructing a table-top in the house to take advantage of a large south facing window for compositions with bright slanting planes of lights and shadows, yellow highlights and winking green glass bowls. I’m looking for an abrupt transition from Renoir to somewhere past Janet Fish – can’t wait!